At my high school in Tallahassee, Florida, every student was required to take a class called Life Management, which was largely about not getting pregnant (or not getting someone pregnant) before marriage. As far as these courses go in the South, Life Management wasn’t really that bad: Yes, the teacher told us she wished she could “sprinkle fairy dust” on us to keep us abstinent throughout our teens—but she also taught us how to use condoms, for which I give her immense credit. Still, one fundamental purpose of the course was to scare us into medium-term celibacy. And to that end, the focal point was a 24-hour simulation of infant caretaking utilizing so-called Baby Think It Over dolls. This exercise involved each student “nursing” a robot baby by twisting a key in its back when it cried at random intervals.
By this point in my life, I was fairly confident that I would never engage in the acts necessary to commit accidental insemination. But I was not exactly forthcoming with this information, as the South at this time was not the most welcoming environment for young gay teenagers who were already pretty strange. So I completed the robo-baby exercise uncomplainingly—and quickly grew convinced that this utterly fatuous task would have exactly zero impact on straight, hormonal teenagers’ desire to engage in potentially procreative intercourse.
It turns out I was wrong. Robo-babies may well affect teen pregnancy rates—by increasing them. That’s the upshot of a rigorous new study published this week in esteemed medical journal the Lancet. The controlled, randomized trial divided nearly 3,000 Australian schoolgirls ages 13 to 15 into two groups: one that received standard sex education instruction, and one that received the “Virtual Infant Parenting programme” (which included the robo-babies). Researchers were given access to the students’ medical records throughout their teens. They discovered that the robo-baby group had a teen pregnancy rate of 17 percent—while the non-robo-baby group had a teen pregnancy rate of just 11 percent.
Sally A. Brinkman, the lead author of the study, concluded from this data that the robo-baby program had clearly “failed.” She found that many schoolgirls enjoyed taking care of the “virtual infant,” suggesting that the experience made motherhood seem fairly easy and pleasant. Indeed, the study also found that schoolgirls who took care of the robo-baby were less likely to get an abortion if they got pregnant. That unexpected finding may indicate that because of their successful experience with a robot, these girls believed they were more prepared for motherhood.
The Wall Street Journal asked Melissa Kang, an adolescent sexuality expert at the University of Sydney, what she thought of the study’s results. Her response was essentially, “Duh”:
The numbers are small, but it makes such intuitive sense that something like this wouldn’t work. I think the reasons that young woman would choose to access contraception are far more likely about other reasons—the access to resources around her—being far more important than having time with a robot doll.
I have a personal postscript to this story. After I graduated, my Life Management teacher—a kindly but stern older woman—retired, and a new instructor took over the course. I called him on Friday to ask whether he continued the robo-baby exercise. “I did not,” he told me:
I just didn’t feel like it really represents a real-life baby. I just had my first child, me and my wife did, this last March. I’m getting the real version of it now. I remember when I was in high school, we didn’t do a doll, we did an egg, and I just remember feeling like, you know, there’s no way this is real life. This is not even anywhere close to what it feels like. I didn’t feel like it did it justice.
I told the teacher that a new study appeared to confirm his intuition.
“You were right on the money,” I said.
“Hey, every once in a while,” he responded jovially.
Who says the South can’t change?
