AHAHAHAHAHH! "Baby simulators" backfire and result in more teen motherhood!

[CairoCarol]

@Peremensoe

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?

Maybe I wasn’t clear. What I meant by “screwing up” the lives of teens is “causing them to have more babies.” The OP seemed to be taking pleasure in the fact that the program caused MORE teens to have babies, not fewer, and I was referring to that.

FWIW, my son’s school did one of those programs. It did not seem to be especially related to an abstinence agenda, or even sex education in general. It seemed more like something they thought kids should learn in school, just as they were taught certain other useful subjects like math, health, and writing. I had no problem with it, although it was such a short-lived activity (it kind of had to be, since they had super-expensive fake babies that woke the kids up in the middle of the night and did a good job of imitating the sleeplessness that goes along with parenting a newborn) that I doubt it taught the kids anything particularly useful.

[Spice_Weasel]

@SlackerInc

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.

You’re still being kind of unfair to older couples looking to adopt. For me, it’s not so much viewing a child as an ‘‘inconvenience’’ to reserve for later years, so much as having been raised in poverty and abuse, and understanding that having a child is a huge responsibility and the odds of success is higher with greater financial stability and the ability to spend time with the child. I’ve wanted to adopt children since I was 9 years old. My husband was open to it from the time we got together (age 19) in part because his sister was adopted. We married at 23.

Then he was accepted into a Ph.D. program for clinical psych. It was supposed to be a four-year program, it took seven years. I finished school before he did (I only went to Masters level) and felt ready for children before he did, but he was staunchly against having children in graduate school because he actually wanted to have an active part in his children’s life, not just play the bit role, and he barely had time to spend with me much less a kid. *It was not in the child’s best interest for us to be parents at that time. *Then during his internship, he wanted a baby but wasn’t ready for adoption. When I finally did get pregnant, at the age of 31, I miscarried and we were both devastated. I have a number of health difficulties that really make it unrealistic to give birth, including a diagnosis of epilepsy that requires me to be on a medication that increases the odds of birth defects significantly.

We’re both 33. We’re finally done with school and for the first time in our lives we have stable jobs and reliable income. We are hoping to start the adoption process in a couple of months. I was almost adopted out myself and my Mom changed her mind at the last minute, and damned if I don’t ask myself every day how much better off I would have been if she hadn’t been a part of my childhood. It seems like one of life’s greatest injustices that there are women out there forced to have babies they don’t want, or terminating pregnancies out of desperation, and that there are children living in abuse, and that there are people dying to be loving parents. It’s this terrible mismatch of resources and desires and needs and I see adoption as one way to help ameliorate that lack of balance in the world. I do see it as a secondary solution - comprehensive sex-ed and free access to reproductive health care being primary.

[BigT]

@WhyNot

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.

First off, laughing as a result of something appalling and unexpected? What. That reaction makes no sense to me. I can’t recall that every happening to me. I laugh either because something is funny, or because I’m nervous. The only time I’ve seen that reaction is in cartoons, and it’s portrayed as the person having a nervous breakdown and disconnecting with reality.

But, more importantly: the reason you are giving isn’t the one SlackerInc has given. His argument is that trying to prevent teen pregnancy is a bad thing. That it’s a form of propaganda.

The schadenfreude doesn’t make much sense, either. It’s not just laughing at other people’s misfortune. It’s laughing because you think they deserve their misfortune. But why in the world would the people who make these dolls deserve it?

SlackerInc’s answer appears to be that they were being evil in trying to prevent teen pregnancies. I don’t know your reason. You seem to be connecting the dolls with abstinence-only education, but those aren’t connected.

How do I know? I had the dolls, and I was taught about condoms and stuff. Sure, I was still taught that abstinence is the only 100% effective way, but we were taught other stuff, too.

I fully get the idea that these dolls seem to be ineffective at preventing pregnancy. So the answer is to try something else. And then decide if the other goal of the dolls–to teach parental skills–is still good enough to keep using them.

And, yeah, SlackerInc has a reputation. He’s anti-Muslim, for one thing. Check out his other recent Pit thread.

[Spice_Weasel]

@BigT

First off, laughing as a result of something appalling and unexpected? What. That reaction makes no sense to me.

Some people have a very dark sense of humor. Even I have laughed at things that are objectively terrible because they are so absurdly bad. I’ve even laughed at my own misfortune when it was at its most ridiculous. It requires a fairly high level of cynicism, but is not necessarily indicative of a lack of empathy. One might call it a coping mechanism. There’s a reason a lot of stand-up comics draw from their own miserable experiences and why so many people show up to watch those comedians.

Are you familiar with comedienne Tig Notaro?

“Good evening hello, I have cancer, how are you? Hi, how are you? Is everybody having a good time? I have cancer. How are you?”

I suspect a lot of the grief Slacker is being given for this OP is related to the admittedly awful stuff he’s said in the past, not the actual content of the OP.

[SlackerInc]

Well, that’s just, like, your opinion, man. I don’t think *anything *I’ve said is “awful”. (Well, I’m sure there have been a few things over my life, but I apologized for them.)

BTW, BigT, that’s mighty two-faced of you to buddy up to me in PMs (which you initiated), and then talk smack about me on the board! :dubious:

@Wendell_Wagner

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.

I never said they were typical of the left. I said they were a faction of the left. If they were typical of the left, I would have a much harder time even being *on *the left. (Of course, your average Bernie Sanders or Jill Stein supporter will scoff at my even claiming to be on the left, given that I staunchly supported Hillary Clinton all through the primaries and still do.)

As for “useful references to such people”, here ya go: Reddit - Dive into anything

@Spice_Weasel

You’re still being kind of unfair to older couples looking to adopt.

Every situation is different, and I’m genuinely sorry to hear about your abusive upbringing. But I have seen up close the way girls are treated when they get pregnant at a young age, and don’t get an abortion (either because they resisted their parents’ pressure to do so, or more often because the family is Catholic or whatever). Maybe this has changed more recently, but I kinda doubt it. There’s a big song and dance about how the baby will be “better off” with an adoptive family. No evidence is provided for this, but we’re supposed to assume this is the case, I guess, because the adoptive family has more money.

And this really gets my dander up and shows another way I am definitely on the left: I don’t like this kind of classist bullshit. My family is low income and I am not going to hear it from anyone who tries to claim that my kids are doomed as a result. As long as you can put food on the table (and even the poorest can do that, thanks to food stamps) and you are loving, compassionate, and eager to learn about optimal parenting practices, anyone can be a good parent and nurture their own offspring.

@CairoCarol

Maybe I wasn’t clear. What I meant by “screwing up” the lives of teens is “causing them to have more babies.”

I think that was clear. What doesn’t seem to be clear to you is that not everyone accepts that it’s so apocalyptically ruinous for a teenager to have a baby.

@Spice_Weasel

Are you familiar with comedienne Tig Notaro?

Legendary.

[Mister_Rik]

@Reluctant_A

Then it does mean what I thought it meant.

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…

For what it’s worth, as somebody who actually spends much of his spare time reading … I understood the OPs laughter with no difficulty.

Seriously, I think some people go into every conversation prepared to be offended, and read everything accordingly. Me, I read the words and interpret them the way they’re said. SlackerInc was perfectly clear.

[Spice_Weasel]

[QUOTE=Slacker]
I don’t like this kind of classist bullshit. My family is low income and I am not going to hear it from anyone who tries to claim that my kids are doomed as a result. As long as you can put food on the table (and even the poorest can do that, thanks to food stamps) and you are loving, compassionate, and eager to learn about optimal parenting practices, anyone can be a good parent and nurture their own offspring.
[/QUOTE]

Couldn’t agree more, I know some excellent parents who struggle with poverty – including one very close friend who placed her third child for adoption – but there are plenty of ways to not be ready for parenting regardless of your class. My mother was roofied and raped at 18, she didn’t tell a soul at the time and instead married the guy who impregenated her (they were dating.) That was expected at the time. He was an abusive drunk. They were divorced inside of a year. She did not want to be a parent, she just felt she had no choice. We were very poor in those early years but I had so much family support it didn’t matter. She got her BS in Mechanical Engineering as a single parent - impressive as hell! - and even had a fancy engineering job for a few years… she really tried to do what she thought was right by me… but it didn’t prevent her from spiraling into profound mental illness that rendered her incapable of parenting effectively, or marrying abuser after abuser, or becoming an abuser herself. I always felt like she resented my existence, and I came to resent my own existence in time. The level of tragedy there, in knowing how badly she wanted to be a good parent and contrasting it with how hard she failed, fucking rips my heart out. We ended our relationship in April and I’m still dealing with the grief. You can love someone with all your heart and they can still be poison for you.

I occasionally think I’d rather have been aborted or at least adopted out. But ultimately, if you live that reality, you have to get to a point where you realize you wouldn’t have the good things in your life without the bad things having happened. I met my husband because I was in a student-created group in college designed by people with mental illness to fight the stigma against mental illness. He attended one of our events for extra credit and saw me perform a skit I wrote about the difficulty of reconciling the existence of mental illness with the belief in an all-loving god. He was moved enough by my courage to e-mail me, and being a psychology student, he wasn’t intimidated by my own issues. If I didn’t have that fire under my ass about mental health issues as a result of my upbringing, I never would have connected with the love of my life. I wouldn’t be me.

I agree parental manipulation can be an issue for young pregnant women. This is why I favor open adoption, where the birth parent chooses us, and where we can get to know their situation and make the determination, to the best of our ability, about whether this is truly an empowered choice made by the birth parent or whether they are being pressured into it… and so that the adoption takes place on their own terms, at the level of contact that is comfortable for them, etc. Once someone you love has gone through the heartache of placing a child for adoption you can’t look at the process without seeing also what the birth parent is going through.

Despite all of those considerations, the ultimate guiding principle has to be what is truly best for the child. The answer to that is going to differ based on individual circumstances. I truly believe when my mother chose to keep me, she believed it was in my own best interest. Unfortunately, we can’t see into the future, we can only make our best guess based on circumstances at the time. She judged incorrectly, but I do believe she did her best. So I don’t resent her for that.

[Spice_Weasel]

@SlackerInc

Legendary.

Eek! We are so listening to this tomorrow. Thanks for the tip-off.

[Mister_Rik]

@SlackerInc

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.

I’m not “left”, but I have specifically chosen to remain childless because “my life sucks and I refuse to pass the suck along”.

[scabpicker]

Laughing at this is exactly like laughing at someone’s “watch this!” moment, IMHO. It was a short-sighted idea, that when examined, was kind of predictable. If you give someone a simulation of the cute/cuddly stage (horrid as it may seem to the childless among us), then it would prevent them from trying to act out the reality.

The simulation didn’t act out the rest of child development, so like most simulations, it was inaccurate. For instance, it seems like the potential mothers assumed a real child would be more interesting to interact with as they got older. It didn’t illustrate that the child would progressively become more of a pain in the ass to manage and take care of as it became older, smarter, and more capable. Like a lot of simulations, it wasn’t particularly useful at demonstrating what appears to be the intended goal; which appears to be to influence people to have babies later in life, when they’re more prepared to deal with them.

So yeah, it’s funny as hell. The unintended but pretty foreseeable ineffective consequences are kind of easy to parse. Those people aren’t me, we don’t really know what the pregnancy rate would be without the dolls. To put a very fine point on it: strangers get born every day, and you never know how they will turn out. The sadness is that perfectly good money was spent ineffectually. But, that’s still kind of funny. I do it and laugh at myself pretty regularly.

[Kobal2]

Agreed. They should have given them a teenager simulator for the real PITA.

[puzzlegal]

@Peremensoe

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?

I was wondering the same thing.

I’ve read that poor girls sometimes can parent better when they are still young enough to get substantial help from their own mothers, and wonder if the whole push to prevent teen pregnancy might be misguided.

But it is amusing that dolls marketed to reduce teen rearing have instead increased it.

[snfaulkner]

@TriPolar

I have a rock that stops bear attacks. It always worked for me. I gave it to a friend who hunts a lot and he was attacked by bear. What on earth went wrong?

He probably didn’t pay the bear tax.

[SlackerInc]

@Mister_Rik

For what it’s worth, as somebody who actually spends much of his spare time reading … I understood the OPs laughter with no difficulty.

Seriously, I think some people go into every conversation prepared to be offended, and read everything accordingly. Me, I read the words and interpret them the way they’re said. SlackerInc was perfectly clear.

Thank you!

@puzzlegal

I’ve read that poor girls sometimes can parent better when they are still young enough to get substantial help from their own mothers, and wonder if the whole push to prevent teen pregnancy might be misguided.

But it is amusing that dolls marketed to reduce teen rearing have instead increased it.

This, totally.

@Spice_Weasel

If I didn’t have that fire under my ass about mental health issues as a result of my upbringing, I never would have connected with the love of my life. I wouldn’t be me.

Aye, there’s the rub.

@Spice_Weasel

I agree parental manipulation can be an issue for young pregnant women. This is why I favor open adoption, where the birth parent chooses us, and where we can get to know their situation and make the determination, to the best of our ability, about whether this is truly an empowered choice made by the birth parent or whether they are being pressured into it… and so that the adoption takes place on their own terms, at the level of contact that is comfortable for them, etc.

That’s cool. You definitely sound like “one of the good ones”!

@Spice_Weasel

Eek! We are so listening to this tomorrow. Thanks for the tip-off.

You’re welcome!

@scabpicker

The simulation didn’t act out the rest of child development, so like most simulations, it was inaccurate. For instance, it seems like the potential mothers assumed a real child would be more interesting to interact with as they got older. It didn’t illustrate that the child would progressively become more of a pain in the ass to manage and take care of as it became older, smarter, and more capable.

But they do also become more fun to interact with (even as, yes, they can become more of a PITA in some ways, for sure). I think dads especially tend to feel this way, while moms tend to always think fondly back to the baby stage and kind of half-wish their kids were babies again. (As always, YMMV, people differ, but this has been a pretty consistent pattern with all the parents I know.)

@Kobal2

Agreed. They should have given them a teenager simulator for the real PITA.

LOL!

[MandaJo]

Wait, so on one hand, it’s unfair and manipulative for parents to encourage their teen daughters to give their babies up for adoption, but at the exact same time, it’s a reasonable inference that those kids will be okay because they will have grandparents who devote considerable time and effort into raising them?

Honestly, I wonder if anyone has done a study on the impact of teen motherhood on the economic outlook of grandparents. Late 30s, early 40s can be a great period of time to start building your career, go back to school, etc.–especially if that’s the time the kids are finally grown. Starting all over immediately with a new infant is a good way to make sure you never have a chance to build your skills or your savings.

The “grandparent” argument is really more an argument for delaying child-rearing: if people had their babies in their early 30s, grandparents would be retiring right as grandchildren come along. That’s a much better age to ask someone to drop everything and help out.

People having babies too young contribute to the cycle of poverty. The burden and responsibility this puts on young grandmothers is part of the problem, not the solution.

[Nava]

@SlackerInc

But they do also become more fun to interact with (even as, yes, they can become more of a PITA in some ways, for sure). I think dads especially tend to feel this way, while moms tend to always think fondly back to the baby stage and kind of half-wish their kids were babies again. (As always, YMMV, people differ, but this has been a pretty consistent pattern with all the parents I know.)

Hmmm… my own experience is that everybody I’ve known to express “I wish they were still babies” was a woman, but they’re very much a minority; a few of them can’t follow those kids at all, others are the kind of person who expects the world to adapt to their desires and plans rather than the other way around. There are more who have mentioned remembering those times wistfully and then remembering that baby shit is very, very similar to diarrhea and can come out in amazing quantities.

[puzzlegal]

Yeah, I tell all my friends with babies how much better it gets as they grow up. I do know a couple of women who are nostalgic for babies, but I think they are a minority.

[puzzlegal]

@MandaJo

Wait, so on one hand, it’s unfair and manipulative for parents to encourage their teen daughters to give their babies up for adoption, but at the exact same time, it’s a reasonable inference that those kids will be okay because they will have grandparents who devote considerable time and effort into raising them?
…

who said that? There’s a major difference between the government trying to discourage tend from child-rearing and their parents doing so.

And I don’t think it’s unfair and manipulative for the schools to teach that, either. I just wonder if it is universally good advice.

[even_sven]

SlackerInc is way out there on a lot of subjects.

But the real problem isn’t teen parents. The real problem is that our society is a very difficult place to be a parent in.

The well-off can make up for our lack of paid maternity leave, wildly unequal public schools, bad childcare options, ridiculing healthcare “system” and other issues. But I’d rather see a society that’s set up to support families and children, and where we don’t have to constantly play chicken with out fertility if we hope to be financially stable.

[Spice_Weasel]

She’s right, you know.