"We never went into the study thinking this would increase teen pregnancy. . . . Unfortunately that's the finding."For background, read God Created Woman to Give Birth and Breast-feed
-- Sally Brinkman, University of Western Australia
Click headlines below to read previous articles:
Teenage Pregnancy & Birth Rates Drop to Historic Lows
Too Many Minority Babies, Obama's Feds Say of Teen Births
America Self-destructing via Feminist Childlessness: Census Reports
Government Teenage Uterine Control Success Touted
-- From "Robot baby schemes may increase teen pregnancy: study" by Madeleine Coorey, Agence France-Presse 8/26/16
Researchers found that girls between the ages of 13 and 15 who were given a simulator infant to look after were actually more likely to become pregnant early in life than those who had simple sex education.
Of those who had charge of a doll, 17 percent recorded at least one pregnancy -- whether carried to full term or terminated -- by the age of 20.
Of all the girls who fell pregnant, 53.8 percent of those who had the robot baby terminated the pregnancy compared with 60.1 percent in the control group.
The researchers said while that difference was not huge, it indicated participants who had exposure to the robot baby appeared more likely go through with the pregnancy.
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From "'Pretend Mommy' program doesn't deter teen pregnancy" by Dennis Thompson, HealthDay News 8/25/16
Australian girls given a baby simulator for a weekend were 36 percent more likely to become pregnant during their teenage years, compared to girls in a control group who only received standard health education, researchers found.
Overall, the live birth rate was double for girls who participated in the infant simulator program -- 8 percent compared with 4 percent for the control group, researchers found.
The baby simulator program also appeared to convince girls to give birth rather than seek an abortion once they became pregnant, Brinkman said.
These results run counter to the intention of the program, which has been implemented in as many as 89 countries worldwide. It should make school districts think twice about employing baby simulators in their pregnancy prevention efforts, Brinkman said.
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From "Robot babies that schools use to discourage teen pregnancy may do opposite, study finds" by Paige Cornwell, Seattle Times staff reporter 8/25/16
To help discourage teen pregnancy, many students in the Seattle area and nationally are given lifelike, robot babies that cry throughout the night. Unlike eggs or plants used to represent babies in some human-development classes, these dolls require feeding, burping and diaper changes. Like real infants, sometimes even that doesn’t stop their crying.
The Australia program was adapted from one in the United States, formerly known as “Baby Think It Over” and now called “RealCare Baby 3.” Along with Seattle, area schools districts that use RealCare Baby 3 include Highline, Everett and Kent.
The doll’s creator, Realityworks, says more than half the school districts in the [U.S.] have purchased its products.
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From "Study: Robot baby dolls don’t curb teen pregnancies. In fact, they may increase abortions" by Ben Guarino, Washington Post 8/26/16
The babies, which can run about $1,000 apiece, are programmed to cry, scream and sleep. Computers tucked within the dolls register when the babies are changed, burped, fed or — in instances where everything goes drastically wrong — when they “die.”
“We’ve had midnight telephone calls from parents saying: ‘Please tell me how to turn it off, my daughter’s going crazy,’” as Janette Collins, a London-based youth counselor said to the Financial Times last October. “It’s the very few girls who score really well that you have to look out for. In my experience they’re the ones who go off and get pregnant for real — you’ve accidentally taught them they can cope.”
“Anecdotally, a lot of the students really enjoyed the program,” study author Sally Brinkman, of Australia’s Telethon Kids Institute, told the Sydney Morning Herald. “There was a lot of positivity around the program, so it didn’t really work in putting the kids off.”
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From "Teen pregnancy program had a reverse effect: study" by Kate Aubusson, Sydney Morning Herald 8/26/16
The gurgling dolls may have inadvertently made teen motherhood too appealing, with many students doting on their electronic progeny and enjoying the attention that came with it, the researchers said.
"We definitely were not saying you can't become a teenage mother. We didn't want to demonise that, but the intention was clearly behind the program to increase contraceptive use and if you were going to have a baby to do it in a healthy way, and part of doing it in a healthy way was to delay," [Dr. Brinkman] said.
"Evidence now suggests they do not have the desired long-term effect of reducing teenage pregnancy. These interventions are likely to be an ineffective use of public resources for pregnancy prevention," Dr Brinkman said.
The simulators were currently used by more than 40,000 institutions worldwide . . .
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Also read Free Condoms Cause More Student Pregnancies: Study
And read Abstinent Teens the Norm, Moral Sex-Ed Works: Study