# AHAHAHAHAHH! "Baby simulators" backfire and result in more teen motherhood! **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [September 2, 2016, 11:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ahahahahahh-baby-simulators-backfire-and-result-in-more-teen-motherhood/764765 "2016-09-02T11:08:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2016, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ahahahahahh-baby-simulators-backfire-and-result-in-more-teen-motherhood/764765/41 "2016-09-03T16:00:00Z")
My understanding is that this study is about the dolls kids had to take home. What about the earlier versions of this idea, with the eggs or flour sacks you had to take care of? There were a number of TV shows about this, including an episode of A Different World, an After School Special “Flour Sack Babies”, and a Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode. (In the last, the eggs hatched out monsters, except for Xander’s, because he’d boiled it, because of course he did.) ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2016, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ahahahahahh-baby-simulators-backfire-and-result-in-more-teen-motherhood/764765/42 "2016-09-03T17:03:22Z")
The fundamental flaw in all of those is a cultural disconnect between the bureaucrats who design and implement these programs and the teens they are trying to brainw…er, reach. Another irony here is that these educated professionals are lucky not everyone shares their view of caring for babies as miserable drudgery, or they wouldn’t be able to find a daycare or nanny to slough off said drudgery onto. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2016, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ahahahahahh-baby-simulators-backfire-and-result-in-more-teen-motherhood/764765/43 "2016-09-03T17:24:54Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > Cite please for the father being notably older than the mother. I’m not surprised - girls mature earlier than boys - but I’d like to see a cite. This is hardly news or surprising to anyone who’s read much of anything in the field. It was a big, huge, shocking discovery around the early 80s when it was found that most teen girls were pregnant by men significantly older - 20 to 25 or more. It has little to do with maturity of the genders, and more to do with coercion and influential relationships. [Here’s just one cite](http://www.advocatesforyouth.org/publications/publications-a-z/467-pregnancy-and-childbearing-among-younger-teens) about halfway down the page. Google “age of fathers in teen pregnancy” for many more. The point is that the entire notion of sexually educating teens is not just as peers, and girls in particular should have more anti-coercion, anti-BS education. ---
**Author:** ![Sattua](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sattua/32/11906_2.png) [@Sattua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sattua)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2016, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ahahahahahh-baby-simulators-backfire-and-result-in-more-teen-motherhood/764765/44 "2016-09-03T17:34:25Z")
I’m with **SlackerInc** here, and not because I’m gleeful that more teenager girls were having babies, but because the whole campaign was so wrongheaded in so many ways. The fundamental message of those dolls was _you don’t want to do this because it’s hard_. The underlying message is to avoid doing hard things in life. Guess what? College is hard and grad school is harder. Getting a great job is hard. Marriage is hard. Staying fit is hard. Oh, you say they should totally do all those things? But they shouldn’t have babies because taking care of them is hard? Fuck that noise. ---
**Author:** ![Revenant\_Threshold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f1d935/32.png) [@Revenant\_Threshold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revenant_Threshold)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2016, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ahahahahahh-baby-simulators-backfire-and-result-in-more-teen-motherhood/764765/45 "2016-09-03T17:36:12Z")
> [@Sattua](#): > > I’m with **SlackerInc** here, and not because I’m gleeful that more teenager girls were having babies, but because the fundamental message of those dolls was _you don’t want to do this because it’s hard_. The underlying message is to avoid doing hard things in life. I think the fundamental message is\* this is hard\*. Whether you want to do it is up to you; but be aware of what it means. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2016, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ahahahahahh-baby-simulators-backfire-and-result-in-more-teen-motherhood/764765/46 "2016-09-03T17:51:06Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Yes, I expected to hear this from the CW crowd. Fine, let’s just drive it home how having a child is the pits. How it will ruin your life. How there’s nothing warm and tender and loving and fun about it. And then let’s hope that doesn’t become a self-fulfilling prophecy when they do end up having kids, whether now or later. Even if this cynical intervention had worked, how many screwed-up people would it have made in the next generation? > > ETA: I’d also like to add that it is highly dubious to assert the arrow of causality only goes one way (“they are more likely to be poor, stay poor, be poorly educated and generally have the odds stacked against them and their children for the rest of their lives”). Well, there’s a valid perspective there that shouldn’t be discarded. Anyone reading this at home and thinking about having kids: remember that your kid might grow up to be **SlackerInc**. Chilling, isn’t it? ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2016, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ahahahahahh-baby-simulators-backfire-and-result-in-more-teen-motherhood/764765/47 "2016-09-03T18:06:28Z")
**Miller** , not a very good burn, as it doesn’t fit with what you quoted. C+ for effort though! > [@Sattua](#): > > I’m with **SlackerInc** here, and not because I’m gleeful that more teenager girls were having babies, but because the whole campaign was so wrongheaded in so many ways. The fundamental message of those dolls was _you don’t want to do this because it’s hard_. The underlying message is to avoid doing hard things in life. > > Guess what? College is hard and grad school is harder. Getting a great job is hard. Marriage is hard. Staying fit is hard. Oh, you say they should totally do all those things? But they shouldn’t have babies because taking care of them is hard? > > Fuck that noise. Well said. > [@Revenant\_Threshold](#): > > I think the fundamental message is\* this is hard\*. Whether you want to do it is up to you; but be aware of what it means. That clearly was not the intended message, given that the person they interviewed said the program was a failure. More abstinence, contraception use, and/or abortion was the intended effect. ---
**Author:** ![Revenant\_Threshold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f1d935/32.png) [@Revenant\_Threshold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revenant_Threshold)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2016, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ahahahahahh-baby-simulators-backfire-and-result-in-more-teen-motherhood/764765/48 "2016-09-03T18:14:18Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > That clearly was not the intended message, given that the person they interviewed said the program was a failure. More abstinence, contraception use, and/or abortion was the intended effect. The intended effect certainly seems to be not what they were going for. That doesn’t affect what the message was. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2016, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ahahahahahh-baby-simulators-backfire-and-result-in-more-teen-motherhood/764765/49 "2016-09-03T18:19:37Z")
> [@Sattua](#): > > I’m with **SlackerInc** here, and not because I’m gleeful that more teenager girls were having babies, but because the whole campaign was so wrongheaded in so many ways. The fundamental message of those dolls was _you don’t want to do this because it’s hard_. The underlying message is to avoid doing hard things in life. > > Guess what? College is hard and grad school is harder. Getting a great job is hard. Marriage is hard. Staying fit is hard. Oh, you say they should totally do all those things? But they shouldn’t have babies because taking care of them is hard? > > Fuck that noise. Word. I’m a pro-choice, sex positive parent and once teen mother myself, and I find myself wondering if \*\*SlackerInc \*\*has a reputation I’m unfamiliar with. Because the responses in this thread are bizarre. Look, it’s very simple. The fuckhead abstinence only motherfuckers made this fake baby, see? And gave it to kids to try to scare them out of having sex, because babies are horrible and gross and they totes cry when you’re trying to sleep. Without ever once stopping to consider that teens are only slightly removed from kids, and kids love to play with dolls, and kids REALLY love to play with realistic dolls that cry and can be fed (accessories not included). And they didn’t even start small and test to see if their goals were being met, they just spent 20 YEARS of public funding to encourage teenagers to play with expensive dolls that made them decide they wanted a real baby. Or they could handle a real baby. Or whatever. Point is: fuckhead abstinence only people can’t science for shit. And they have no place in the classroom. That’s…that’s not exactly _funny_. That’s appalling and yet unexpected, in just the right measure to make me laugh out loud and shake my damn head. ---
**Author:** ![Reluctant\_A](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/839c29/32.png) [@Reluctant\_A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reluctant_A)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2016, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ahahahahahh-baby-simulators-backfire-and-result-in-more-teen-motherhood/764765/50 "2016-09-03T18:21:52Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > I don’t think teenage girls should be slut-shamed for being sexual beings, and I do think they should get good, accurate sex ed and access to contraception if they want it, but I don’t believe they should be propagandized into considering young motherhood some dire situation to avoid at all costs, and I definitely oppose pressuring them into abortion or adoption. > > Does that clear up where I am coming from? Not as such: what do you mean by “propagandized” into avoiding teen pregnancy, and “pressuring them into abortion”? Where are you making the delineation between “good, accurate sex ed” and “propaganda”? ---
**Author:** ![Reluctant\_A](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/839c29/32.png) [@Reluctant\_A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reluctant_A)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2016, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ahahahahahh-baby-simulators-backfire-and-result-in-more-teen-motherhood/764765/51 "2016-09-03T18:24:14Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > I’m a pro-choice, sex positive parent and once teen mother myself, and I find myself wondering if \*\*SlackerInc \*\*has a reputation I’m unfamiliar with. Because the responses in this thread are bizarre. Well, YMMV of course, but I feel like the whole “basking in the schadenfreude” thing has led to the sort of responses that are (IMHO) quite deserved. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2016, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ahahahahahh-baby-simulators-backfire-and-result-in-more-teen-motherhood/764765/52 "2016-09-03T18:48:03Z")
> [@Reluctant\_A](#): > > Well, YMMV of course, but I feel like the whole “basking in the schadenfreude” thing has led to the sort of responses that are (IMHO) quite deserved. Why? I’m glad the abstinence pushers took a hit. They deserve to. So, yeah, call that “schadenfreude” if you like. What’s the problem with that? Is it because \*\*QuickSilver \*\*misunderstood the direction of the schadenfreude to mean \*\*SlackerInc \*\*was laughing at the teen parents and set the tone for the thread? Is that the problem? That’s not **SlackerInc** ’s problem. His emotion is clearly directed at the infant simulator program, not the students. ---
**Author:** ![Reluctant\_A](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/839c29/32.png) [@Reluctant\_A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reluctant_A)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2016, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ahahahahahh-baby-simulators-backfire-and-result-in-more-teen-motherhood/764765/53 "2016-09-03T19:02:35Z")
I disagree with the assessment that that was made “clear” at any point. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2016, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ahahahahahh-baby-simulators-backfire-and-result-in-more-teen-motherhood/764765/54 "2016-09-03T19:03:55Z")
> [@Reluctant\_A](#): > > Not as such: what do you mean by “propagandized” into avoiding teen pregnancy, and “pressuring them into abortion”? Where are you making the delineation between “good, accurate sex ed” and “propaganda”? I want them to get the same kind of good information you would wish a 25 year old woman to have about her reproductive health and options. Not to tilt it toward “Don’t have sex; or if you do, don’t get pregnant; or if you do, get an abortion; or as a last resort, give the baby up for adoption.” ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2016, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ahahahahahh-baby-simulators-backfire-and-result-in-more-teen-motherhood/764765/55 "2016-09-03T19:05:00Z")
> [@Reluctant\_A](#): > > I disagree with the assessment that that was made “clear” at any point. I made sure to clarify it specifically at one point. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2016, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ahahahahahh-baby-simulators-backfire-and-result-in-more-teen-motherhood/764765/56 "2016-09-03T19:05:38Z")
> [@Reluctant\_A](#): > > I disagree with the assessment that that was made “clear” at any point. It’s in the OP: > [@SlackerInc](#): > > **This program** , and the whole patronizing, contemptuous anti-child attitude that went along with it, always rubbed me the wrong way. So now I am just absolutely basking in the schadenfreude. 😃 (bolding mine) ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2016, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ahahahahahh-baby-simulators-backfire-and-result-in-more-teen-motherhood/764765/57 "2016-09-03T19:47:55Z")
There’s still an element of “Hahaha, stupid fuckers may have ruined people’s LIVES” that jars. Like laughing when ita discovered that a painful invasive drug didn’t even help the people who took it. And yes, he’s an asshole. You might search “threads started by. . .” Always claims to be “liberal, but . . .” and then says something appalling like “the sort of kids who get pregnant are probably too stupid to escape poverty anyway”. ---
**Author:** ![Reluctant\_A](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/839c29/32.png) [@Reluctant\_A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reluctant_A)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2016, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ahahahahahh-baby-simulators-backfire-and-result-in-more-teen-motherhood/764765/58 "2016-09-03T19:50:04Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > I want them to get the same kind of good information you would wish a 25 year old woman to have about her reproductive health and options. Not to tilt it toward “Don’t have sex; or if you do, don’t get pregnant; or if you do, get an abortion; or as a last resort, give the baby up for adoption.” Your experience is way different from mine: aside from the evangelical “don’t have sex” part, I don’t ever encounter any of that, anywhere. Pregnant teen mothers being encouraged to have abortions and/or give up their children for adoptions is not really consistent with my experience at all. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2016, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ahahahahahh-baby-simulators-backfire-and-result-in-more-teen-motherhood/764765/59 "2016-09-03T19:54:01Z")
SlackerInc writes: \> It all makes me think of the C.M. Kornbluth story “The Marching Morons”, which I \> suspect was the inspiration for the movie Idiocracy. The story describes a somewhat \> plausible future with a small high-IQ class and a much larger subclass of, well, \> morons. A 20th century man awakens from suspended animation in this time, and \> the high-IQ crowd explains to him that it was the fault of educated professionals like \> him, who tended to have few or no children (this was written way back in 1951, in \> the midst of the Baby Boom, but the subsequent years have borne this idea out). You do realize, don’t you, that the Flynn Effect contradicts the predictions of “The Marching Morons” and _Idiocracy_? The average I.Q. has been steadily going up since 1930. By this I don’t mean that the average score on the I.Q. tests that have been just written and used to test people at a given time are going up. Each time a new I.Q. test is written, it is normed so that the average score among the people who take it is set at 100. What I mean is that if that same current group of people were to take the I.Q. tests that were written several decades before, when those old I.Q. tests were also normed so that the average would be 100, the current group would average somewhat higher than 100. In general, people today would score three points higher for each decade that they are removed from the older test. So people today would score about 103 on a 10-year-old test, 106 on a 20-year-old test, 109 on a 30-year-old test, etc. This has been true for every industrialized country (and nonindustrialized countries don’t tend to have a long history of offering I.Q. tests), for every year since 1930, for every age group, for every major I.Q. test, and for every other way anybody has thought of testing the Flynn Effect: > **[Flynn effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect)** > > The Flynn effect is the substantial and long-sustained increase in both fluid and crystallized intelligence test scores that were measured in many parts of the world over the 20th century. When intelligence quotient (IQ) tests are initially standardized using a sample of test-takers, by convention the average of the test results is set to 100 and their standard deviation is set to 15 or 16 IQ points. When IQ tests are revised, they are again standardized using a new sample of test-takers, Test ... ---
**Author:** ![Reluctant\_A](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/839c29/32.png) [@Reluctant\_A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reluctant_A)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2016, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ahahahahahh-baby-simulators-backfire-and-result-in-more-teen-motherhood/764765/60 "2016-09-03T19:54:41Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > It’s in the OP: > (bolding mine) “Schadenfreude” must mean something different than I thought it did, then, because I don’t understand how someone can read that passage, and the very first impression they come to is that he was laughing at the schadenfreude of the surveyors. In what sense does them discovering that their findings didn’t support their thesis qualify as schadenfreude? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ahahahahahh-baby-simulators-backfire-and-result-in-more-teen-motherhood/764765.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ahahahahahh-baby-simulators-backfire-and-result-in-more-teen-motherhood/764765.md?page=4)