# 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:** 4
**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, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ahahahahahh-baby-simulators-backfire-and-result-in-more-teen-motherhood/764765/61 "2016-09-03T19:55:51Z")
This is where he really fleshes out his “inner city kids are just born stupid” argument. > **[When will "reformers" learn that you can't blame "failing schools" for low...](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=769653)** > > (This is not prefaced “RO” because my wife is a special education teacher, who is hardworking and does a great job, but who is constantly being implicitly blamed by all this “failing schools” talk, as her students do not have the inherent capability... ---
**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, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ahahahahahh-baby-simulators-backfire-and-result-in-more-teen-motherhood/764765/62 "2016-09-03T20:02:41Z")
> [@Reluctant\_A](#): > > “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? Schadenfreude means pleasure derived from another person’s misfortune. \*\*SlackerInc \*\*feels schadenfreude derived from the misfortune being experienced by the infant simulator programs. Presumably, these programs will have a harder time convincing schools to use their expensive dolls for sex ed classes now that this information is public. This is their misfortune. They certainly weren’t \*hoping \*for these results. ---
**Author:** ![Paranoid\_Randroid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/paranoid_randroid/32/18_2.png) [@Paranoid\_Randroid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paranoid_Randroid)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2016, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ahahahahahh-baby-simulators-backfire-and-result-in-more-teen-motherhood/764765/63 "2016-09-03T20:21:30Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > 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. I must have missed where this is strictly coming from abstinence-only educators? ---
**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, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ahahahahahh-baby-simulators-backfire-and-result-in-more-teen-motherhood/764765/64 "2016-09-03T20:21:50Z")
> [@MandaJo](#): > > This is where he really fleshes out his “inner city kids are just born stupid” argument. > [When will "reformers" learn that you can't blame "failing schools" for low test scores? - The BBQ Pit - Straight Dope Message Board](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=769653) Inaccurate. Lead exposure is a huge culprit, and that mostly occurs after birth. But blaming teachers and principals (and yes, I am strongly pro-teachers union, which I do think qualifies as “liberal” with no “but…”) is still unfair. > [@Reluctant\_A](#): > > “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? It’s \*my \*schadenfreude, not theirs. Duh. > [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > You do realize, don’t you, that the Flynn Effect contradicts the predictions of “The Marching Morons” and _Idiocracy_? That’s an excellent point (and yes, I have been aware of the Flynn Effect for a good long while: for example, see my name in the comments section of [this article](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/are-you-smarter-than-your-grandfather-probably-not-150402883/?no-ist)). I wondered how long this can continue, given that [IQ is highly heritable,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ) and given that educated women tend to reproduce at much lower rates than other women. But then when I looked for a cite for the second part of that, I found that [the newest data](http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/05/07/childlessness-falls-family-size-grows-among-highly-educated-women/) is showing such women have seen a sharp uptick in fertility in recent years. So, hmm…interesting! ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2016, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ahahahahahh-baby-simulators-backfire-and-result-in-more-teen-motherhood/764765/65 "2016-09-03T20:29:42Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > ETA: CW stands for “conventional wisdom”. Thanks for the clarification. I read “the CW crowd” as “the demographic that watches The CW television network”. ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2016, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ahahahahahh-baby-simulators-backfire-and-result-in-more-teen-motherhood/764765/66 "2016-09-03T20:52:46Z")
> [@Paranoid\_Randroid](#): > > I must have missed where this is strictly coming from abstinence-only educators? I find confusing as well. The OP seems to be laughing at child-haters, which has traditionally been an accusation thrown at the liberal left, yet abstinence-only education is promoted almost always (or entirely) by the conservative right. I’m not sure whose misfortune we’re supposed to be taking delight in. ---
**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, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ahahahahahh-baby-simulators-backfire-and-result-in-more-teen-motherhood/764765/67 "2016-09-03T20:53:49Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > Schadenfreude means pleasure derived from another person’s misfortune. Then it _does_ mean what I thought it meant. > [@](#): > > \*\*SlackerInc \*\*feels schadenfreude derived from the misfortune being experienced by the infant simulator programs. I do not feel as though this was made clear from the context clues in the OP. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it _does_ seem clear that he’s getting his life to _somebody’s_ misfortune… ---
**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, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ahahahahahh-baby-simulators-backfire-and-result-in-more-teen-motherhood/764765/68 "2016-09-03T20:56:45Z")
> [@Paranoid\_Randroid](#): > > I must have missed where this is strictly coming from abstinence-only educators? Yes, you must have. But I didn’t (except that I didn’t say “strictly”, and that’s not relevant). I was there 20+ years ago when these things started being rolled out in abstinence only programs. There’s no reason they can’t be used with a comprehensive curriculum, but that’s not where they started, and not where they’re used most heavily. ---
**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, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ahahahahahh-baby-simulators-backfire-and-result-in-more-teen-motherhood/764765/69 "2016-09-03T21:06:21Z")
> [@VinylTurnip](#): > > I find confusing as well. The OP seems to be laughing at child-haters, which has traditionally been an accusation thrown at the liberal left, yet abstinence-only education is promoted almost always (or entirely) by the conservative right. I’m not sure whose misfortune we’re supposed to be taking delight in. I’m a stay-at-home dad, a pro-child progressive. I don’t get along with certain branches of the left, including the one that is anti-child. The most extreme call themselves “childfree” and call parents “breeders” and children “sprogs” or “crotch droppings”, but there is a less vulgar strain of that philosophy that kind of treats children as an inconvenience that you might get to in your late thirties or so, as long as you have a great career by then and plenty of money for nannies and private schools. And if they aren’t able to have biological children by then, even after spending lots of money on fertility treatments, they expect pregnant teens to serve as their breeding mares, giving up their children to be adopted since they obviously aren’t capable of raising them. It’s doing them a favor, really! Better for all concerned. :rolleyes: ---
**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, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ahahahahahh-baby-simulators-backfire-and-result-in-more-teen-motherhood/764765/70 "2016-09-03T21:09:13Z")
Since no one else has picked up on it, my posts above about teen pregnancies often involving a father much older than the teen mother mean that it’s likely the training of a pretend baby don’t matter when he assures her he’ll take care of everything. Her natural maternal feelings might have been suppressed by how hard it is to lug a baby-thing around, but when a real adult guy says not to worry about it, she can convince herself she’s getting the best of all worlds: adult sex, less worry about pregnancy and the chance to be a real supported mommy if someone counts wrong. Sex ex for girls needs to include more bullshit detection and reality about older men who might come calling to come. ---
**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, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ahahahahahh-baby-simulators-backfire-and-result-in-more-teen-motherhood/764765/71 "2016-09-03T21:25:38Z")
Seeing as Slacker thinks 15 should be the age of consent across the country and regardless of the other partner’s age, I’m not sure he sees older guys knocking up teens to be a problem to be solved. > **[Age of consent laws should be reformed](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=701349)** > > This is adapted from a debate I am having with a friend on Facebook after she expressed outrage about a lenient sentence given a teacher who was convicted of statutory rape with a 14 year old student. I don’t agree with the status quo of age of... ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2016, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ahahahahahh-baby-simulators-backfire-and-result-in-more-teen-motherhood/764765/72 "2016-09-03T21:36:01Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > That’s an excellent point (and yes, I have been aware of the Flynn Effect for a good long while: for example, see my name in the comments section of [this article](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/are-you-smarter-than-your-grandfather-probably-not-150402883/?no-ist)). I wondered how long this can continue, given that [IQ is highly heritable,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ) and given that educated women tend to reproduce at much lower rates than other women. But then when I looked for a cite for the second part of that, I found that [the newest data](http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/05/07/childlessness-falls-family-size-grows-among-highly-educated-women/) is showing such women have seen a sharp uptick in fertility in recent years. So, hmm…interesting! Well, if you’re the only female engineer/lawyer/criminologist in your country, the immense majority of men will be too scared to ever ask you out and you’re likely to live in a society in which if it’s you who asks a guy out, he’ll run away screaming. Once the ratios of male:female educated people get more or less even, the playing field levels up again. ---
**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, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ahahahahahh-baby-simulators-backfire-and-result-in-more-teen-motherhood/764765/73 "2016-09-03T21:45:51Z")
> [@MandaJo](#): > > Seeing as Slacker thinks 15 should be the age of consent across the country and regardless of the other partner’s age, I’m not sure he sees older guys knocking up teens to be a problem to be solved. > [Age of consent laws should be reformed - Great Debates - Straight Dope Message Board](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=701349) The proposal to teach better bullshit detection sounds good to me. That’s something that would benefit many 20 year olds as well, not just teenagers. ---
**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, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ahahahahahh-baby-simulators-backfire-and-result-in-more-teen-motherhood/764765/74 "2016-09-03T21:50:21Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > I’m a stay-at-home dad, a pro-child progressive. I don’t get along with certain branches of the left, including the one that is anti-child. The most extreme call themselves “childfree” and call parents “breeders” and children “sprogs” or “crotch droppings”, but there is a less vulgar strain of that philosophy that kind of treats children as an inconvenience that you might get to in your late thirties or so, as long as you have a great career by then and plenty of money for nannies and private schools. And if they aren’t able to have biological children by then, even after spending lots of money on fertility treatments, they expect pregnant teens to serve as their breeding mares, giving up their children to be adopted since they obviously aren’t capable of raising them. It’s doing them a favor, really! Better for all concerned. :rolleyes: I also agree that a subtext of the robot-baby program is “money is more important than family.” It takes some extrapolation get there, but get there you sure as hell can. ---
**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, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ahahahahahh-baby-simulators-backfire-and-result-in-more-teen-motherhood/764765/75 "2016-09-03T22:09:29Z")
Definitely. ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2016, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ahahahahahh-baby-simulators-backfire-and-result-in-more-teen-motherhood/764765/76 "2016-09-03T23:39:16Z")
> [@CairoCarol](#): > > Color me genuinely confused but willing to learn from you and others. I don’t pretend to be an expert on how things are in the US these days, given that I’ve lived abroad for a long time. > > ISTM that a program to show potential teen parents that babies are fucking HARD is a good thing. Doing it by giving them “babies” is a way to test this. If you then study the results and find it works, awesome! You’ve shown that you have a policy worth expanding. > > OTOH, If you study the results and find that your well-meaning efforts did not produce the results you wanted, well…oopsie, let’s be good rationalists, acknowledge that our well-meaning intervention did not produce the results we hoped for, and move on, hopefully to a better program that produces improved results. > > “Basking in the schadenfreude” is distasteful and smacks of some other political agenda. Who actually takes pleasure in screwing up the lives of teenagers? > > I’d like to help kids avoid teen pregnancies in the most effective way possible. What would **you** like to accomplish? There seems to be some question as to whether the program _is_ screwing anybody up. What if it is effective training for caring for a baby? What if, among the set of young parents, those with the training–those who _decide to have children after having to really think about it_–turn out to have better outcomes, for themselves and their children, than those without? You want to shut that down and try something else? ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2016, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ahahahahahh-baby-simulators-backfire-and-result-in-more-teen-motherhood/764765/77 "2016-09-03T23:54:59Z")
> [@Reluctant\_A](#): > > 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. Do you really know what-all might be said or suggested to pregnant girls? In the specific program pointed to in the OP, a reduced abortion rate is explicitly mentioned as part of the “exact opposite effects than we had been hoping for.” ---
**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 4, 2016, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ahahahahahh-baby-simulators-backfire-and-result-in-more-teen-motherhood/764765/78 "2016-09-04T00:04:53Z")
SlackerInc writes: \> I don’t get along with certain branches of the left, including the one that is anti-child. \> The most extreme call themselves “childfree” and call parents “breeders” and \> children “sprogs” or “crotch droppings”, but there is a less vulgar strain of that \> philosophy that kind of treats children as an inconvenience that you might get to in \> your late thirties or so, as long as you have a great career by then and plenty of \> money for nannies and private schools. Do you have any evidence that being anti-child is particularly associated with the left? While I know a lot of people who don’t have any children, I would be hard-pressed to describe any of them as anti-child. The ones who don’t have children mostly fit into these categories: 1. The ones who have medical conditions that would make it difficult for them to take care of children. 2. The ones who have medical conditions that they are afraid of passing onto their children and who don’t want to adopt for various reasons. 3. The couples who met too late to have biological children and who don’t want to adopt for various reasons. They find themselves saying, “Why didn’t we meet when we were 25 or 35? Why did we only meet when we were 45? We finally found our perfect partners, and by that time it was too late for us to have children.” 4. The ones who are well beyond child-breeding days and still haven’t found someone that they (mutually) want to marry. Most of them like children and regret that things didn’t work out for them to have them. Some of the couples who do have children barely met in time to have them. One couple I know married when they were both 38 and had their only child when they were 40. I don’t have a lot of friends who are super-career-driven, but I think you are unfair to them. There really are careers in which you are simply left far behind if you don’t spend nearly all of your time before turning middle-aged working. It’s not that they think that their career comes before family so much as their career has dictated that they have to spend all their time on it or else give up any chance to succeed in 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 4, 2016, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ahahahahahh-baby-simulators-backfire-and-result-in-more-teen-motherhood/764765/79 "2016-09-04T00:33:30Z")
The childless people you are talking about are in no way related to the “childfree” group I’m talking about. Google some of the terms I mentioned upthread if you want an eyeful. There are other groups on the left, including my own mother, who believe it’s immoral to have any, or at least many, children. Not because they dislike children, but for environmental reasons, and/or because their sense of social justice dictates that the right thing to do would be to be a foster parent to troubled teens or something. With four biological kids of my own, I get sort of frowned at by all my mom’s friends. ---
**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 4, 2016, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ahahahahahh-baby-simulators-backfire-and-result-in-more-teen-motherhood/764765/80 "2016-09-04T00:46:38Z")
I did Google on them, and I can’t find any useful references to such people. Why do you think that your mother and her friends are typical of the left? I admit that my friends are not typical of everybody, but you should admit the same. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ahahahahahh-baby-simulators-backfire-and-result-in-more-teen-motherhood/764765.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ahahahahahh-baby-simulators-backfire-and-result-in-more-teen-motherhood/764765.md?page=5)