PODCAST #51

REAL TEENS, FAKE BABIES

March 1, 2015 by Hillary + 21 Comments

Tags: high school, Sex + Parenthood Series, sex ed

Welcome to the fourth and final episode of our Sex & Parenthood series!
We are proud to conclude the series as a co-production with the wonderful This American Life. Sex & Parenthood has generated some amazingly deep conversations about a topic we rarely talk about in a real way. Check out parts one, two, and three of the series and join the conversations in the comments!

Now, on to our story.
Did your high school health teacher ever try to teach you the risks of sex by making you carry around an egg and pretend it was a baby? These days, the pretending isn’t as much of a stretch. Lots of schools are opting to use robotic babies that cry throughout the day and night just like a real infant.

We followed two girls at Glen Ridge High School in Glen Ridge, New Jersey through their 48-hour stints with the babies.

Paige was brimming with maternal affection for her fake baby

Rachel just thought it would make for a fun story

Paige (left) identifies as Christian and conservative, and thinks premarital sex is one of the worst mistakes you can make. Rachel (right) identifies as bisexual and liberal, and thinks premarital sex is fine as long as it is consensual.

The babies accompanied the girls through their classes, and they had to stop whatever they were doing to feed, change, burp, and rock the babies each time they cried. (The cries, by the way, are pretty urgent—they are recordings of actual babies crying.)

But, like with real parenting, there were times when the girls couldn’t attend to their babies. For Rachel, it was when she was donating to the blood drive.

The baby looks peaceful here but it is screaming its little plastic head off

Paige’s most dramatic moment happened, literally, in drama club. I don’t want to give it away. But here are some hints.

Listen to the story to hear how the girls managed the pressure of being woken up by a screaming robot all night long. And how just two nights with those robots impacted their feelings about sex … and motherhood.

Resources for talking to kids about sex
Check out our posts with great websites and books for talking to your kids about sex (or just pointing your teenager in the right direction).

Did YOU have to carry around an egg in high school?
Was it fun? Disastrous? Did it change your thoughts on sex or parenthood? Tell us EVERYTHING. Down there, in the comments. (We’d also love to hear from kids and parents of kids who have used the fake babies!)

CORRECTION: In the intro to this story, I say that the electronic babies cost over $1000 each, including their accessories. The correct number is approximately $800.

Thanks to BWN, Podington Bear, Anthony Barilla & Merel van Dijk for music in this episode.

21 thoughts on “PODCAST #51: Real Teens, Fake Babies”

Marissa Kent-White

March 2, 2015 at 3:14 pm

I did the Baby Think It Over program in high school, I think in 1998 or 1999. It was part of a Family and Consumer Sciences class. I loved it. I’ve always wanted to be a mom. In fact, as a toddler, I would breast feed my own dolls. When we got our dolls in class, I was sure I was going to Ace the weekend with the baby care. The dolls were heavy and came in all difference races, which I thought was cool. However, they weren’t nearly as high tech as those in this podcast. And they didn’t come with all of the extra gear. That is impressive! To get our dolls to stop crying, we simply had to hold a key in their back until the crying subsided. My baby only woke me a few times, and I was actually kind of excited to see how I could get it to quiet down. I ended up cheating a little bit by propping the baby against the wall so the key would stay turned and I could go back to sleep. Perhaps this prevented it from crying again at all. I’m not sure. But we didn’t get graded on ways to calm the baby…it didn’t make a difference if it cried for needing a diaper change, hunger, needing to be held. Our babies just didn’t have the technological capacity to differentiate those needs. Crying was crying and you just had to make it stop in a certain amount of time. But the babies were able to track physical abuse. Some guy on the lacrosse team beat the baby with his stick, and the girl in the class with the abused baby, failed. Overall, I think most students liked the experience and felt proud to carry them around the school b/c it got a little extra attention. But no one *really* wanted a real baby to care for in high school…that I know of, anyway. I waited until I was 29 to have my first baby, and that’s simply b/c that’s how my mom did it, and I respect her choices and wanted to follow suit. I hope the program is continued, b/c I think it’s wonderful for naive teenagers who just want something to love them due to lack of self esteem. This is way better than an egg or bag of sugar, that’s for sure. I also think a reflection paper with guided questions could be a really interesting component to the course, and should be accounted for in the grading system.

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Angela

March 2, 2015 at 3:31 pm

I have a very low opinion of these dolls. I think it is patronizing to teens to think that making them ‘care’ for a robotic doll will inform their choices in regards to sexual activity, using birth control or future family planning. My daughter and her friends have all had the doll assignment. These girls had it easy. One boy I know stumbled when exiting the school bus with his doll and it got jostled slightly and it ‘died.’ He received a grade of F and his actual grade for the semester was effected. Even thought the teacher and the school agree that the different dolls are calibrated to different sensitivities. I think this assignment being linked to a grade is incredibly unfair.

I myself was a teenaged mother. I was the victim of an abusive older (23) boyfriend who took off on me when I got pregnant. The ‘caring for an egg’ assignment 2 years before had absolutely no impact on my ability to negotiate a sexual relationship with an abuser.

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Laura

March 2, 2015 at 3:54 pm

Maybe this was just unclear from the editing of the story, but were just the girls (not boys) required to do this? And it was graded? And the girls had to carry the crying babies around in school with their peers and boys didn’t? If so, that’s…so concerning.

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Glenda

March 2, 2015 at 4:14 pm

My son was given a robot baby during his 8th grade year — but for a week. (3 years ago) He, like Rachael actually was attached to “Terra” in an emotional way. She went to restaurants with us, and had to ride in a car seat. He too got looks from other adults while carrying her around. By the end of the week, the night feedings just about had him in tears. At the end, he said that it would be a loooong time before he would every want to try the experiment again, or have a real baby.

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Annie

March 2, 2015 at 4:27 pm

I went to Catholic school in Idaho. We had the earlier turn-key model too. We had to take it for one day in 8th grade. My recollection was the teacher could change the setting to give students an easy or difficult baby.

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H.S.P.L

March 2, 2015 at 5:20 pm

This is one of my favorite episodes. It’s so interesting! I’m curious to know if the male students at this high school were required to participate too. I’d like to hear their experiences.

I wish my high school had had a program like this. I was 9 months pregnant when I realized babies didn’t sleep through the night. That information would have changed my “life plan” the way it did Paige’s. Oh well.

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