Efficacy of infant simulator programmes to prevent teenage pregnancy
thelancet.com
thelancet.com
The program backfired and the girls exposed to the fake infants were more likely to get pregnant in the five years after the intervention."
(Source: https://twitter.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/16893610169188352...)
There's a vast number of people that find happiness and purpose in raising a child
Otherwise, I don't necessarily disagree.
Teenage boys want to do "the thing" with girls that has an unfortunate side effect of potential pregnancy.
We can't act like this isn't natural...we can just make sure they have the tools to be safe and make sure accidents don't happen...
Don't assume that females are asexual beings of light. The amount of sexual yours for women should tell your something
Sex and sex drive is a part of healthy adolescence for both genders. It has nothing to do with emotional immaturity.
Jokes aside, the infant simulators used in the study could not possibly replicate the economic and emotional turmoil of being a working class single mom in 2023 United States. In this respect, the dudes might be even better simulators.
Making them take care of a fake baby likely stimulates the exact same part of their brain that makes them want to have a baby. Sort of like how my wife (or myself, if I'm being honest) will see a cute baby and, despite having already had the experience of having children and knowing full well how difficult they can be, will ecstatically exclaim 'Wouldn't it be great to have another baby?'
Except, as adults, we can make a decision to have or not have a child with some perspective and some modicum of self control. Whereas if you induce the same feeling in a teenage girl, she might just go ahead and do it without thinking, as teenagers are apt to do.
We think “wouldn’t it be great if a nearby relative/friend had a baby”.
[citation fucking needed]. I'd be highly surprised if that was indeed the case.
> Recent data confirm that a wide variation in planning status exists across developing countries. Results from 37 recent DHS surveys show a median of about 75% of pregnancies to adolescents are planned (the data are not disaggregated by marital status). However, the percentage of pregnancies to adolescents that are planned varies widely, from a low of 42% in Colombia to a high of 93% in Egypt (Figure 23). Important regional variation also occurs (Figure 24), with a median of only about half of pregnancies planned in Latin America and the Caribbean versus 69% in sub-Saharan Africa, and between 80% and 90% in North Africa/West Asia/Europe and South and Southeast Asia.
> No clear pattern emerges when comparing planning status of pregnancy in adolescents versus older women. In about half of countries of 37 countries with a recent DHS, adolescents under 20 have higher rates of planned pregnancies compared with women 20-24 years old (Figure 25).
> Data from recent studies bolster findings from previous reviews that adolescents in developed countries have relatively high rates of unplanned pregnancies compared to their counterparts in developing countries. In the U.S. a 2002 national survey found that only 21.6% of births to women under 20 years older were planned, compared to 55.8% of births to women ages 20-24 (Chandra et al. 2005).
I went to school somewhat near my mom's station and I knew several girls in classmate's families who also wanted to be mothers. This is heavily cultural, and some cultures strongly emphasize family life (especially mothers), and these often are the ones in which you'll find a lot of teenage mothers.
In my mom's case, her school was heavily hispanic. Hispanic culture deifies mothers and many teenage / pre-teen girls saw becoming a mother as a way to escape the drudgeries of life and be turned into 'mother'. Of course, they didn't always think about the other sides of it.
Now, I realize this study is in Australia, but Hispanic culture is hardly unique in this area. Many cultures greatly celebrate mothers and motherhood and don't have the same cultural prohibition on teenage parenthood / emphasis on post-high-school education.
And before everyone gets all mad and cries racist, we are also of Latin stock.
EDIT: You seem very surprised that any girl may want a baby as a teenager, but I assure you they exist. Unfortunately, I cannot find direct research on the topic. However, I did find this documentary tracing women who wanted to have babies as teenagers and were happy about it: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/jan/10/were-gl... . Hopefully this at least proves that such people exist.
More sources:
https://www.jrf.org.uk/report/planned-teenage-pregnancy-view...
^ This one in particular substantiates my hypothesis as "Many mothers spoke of their love of babies, often heightened by experience caring for other children."
Why the disconnect?
I think there is a big difference between being surprised, and doubtful, that many/most teenage mothers want to be mothers—a position I and andrepd hold—and being surprised or doubtful that any teenage mother wants to be one—a position neither I, nor, I suspect, andrepd holds.
This study show one of three themes being ignorance, including some mothers thinking that having a child will strengthen their relationship with the father. So there is a sizable portion that chose to have a child, enough so that they are one of the main 3 themes in the results.
I doubt that not wanting to be a mother automatically means that you have the knowledge, and/or a safe way, to prevent or terminate a pregnancy.
There's no need to say the infant simulator *increases* desire for pregnancy. I think it's more likely it doesn't effect attitudes much at all, but standard health education actually suppresses teenage pregnancy. So, the study sees the apparent increase in pregnancy with the simulator program, when compared to the somewhat effective health education.
Sadly, the shock of being in such a weird situation would likely calm the toddlers down.
Hell, it's possible that teenagers naturally have a larger than reality aversion to having children, and these simulations break down the aversion, increasing pregnancies.
The biggest parts of having a baby, for the mom mostly:
1) physical changes and pains during pregnancy, including lack of sleep
2) physical changes and pains during childbirth, including episiotomy/C section, and dealing with that recovery process
3) while this is all going on, you have to teach this baby to breastfeed. Which then leads to engorgement and other pains for the mom, at least for a few weeks.
And all of this is happening while you are on very broken sleep schedules. And assuming you do not have to worry about income/rent/etc.
Or maybe the simulations are easier than raising a baby and so they think "this is no big deal" and start acting irresponsibly.
Do we know why the programs are in these particular schools and not in the control group? It's possible that the schools were initially selected for the programs because they had a higher risk rate already, it's quite possible it is lower than it was before the programs which would mean that they are in fact effective. The methodology of this study isn't airtight.
It's important to note, the study considers abortions to be indicative of failure of the programs and counts abortions before the age of 20 as pregnancies, whereas they could (to put it lightly) be indicative of a desire not to have kids, demonstrating the efficacy of the programs. Not entirely accurate, because you'd expect the same in the schools without the programs, but I'd be interested in seeing the numbers without abortions included in them.
Reminds me of the “DARE” anti-drug program many in the USA had growing up. From my memory, I’m a little first grade kid and I’m getting worksheets about injecting heroin. The studies show DARE didn’t work, and it was totally bizarre as well from my recollection.
Of course, if you called it a police propaganda program, it wouldn’t be as politically viable.
In my (US) high school, this project was done in home economics, which was an elective. But it sounds like these were standard health classes.
tl;dr: Students at schools in both the control and intervention groups took the standard required health class, which includes traditional sex ed. Students at schools in the intervention group had to opt in to the baby simulator. It wasn't a regular class and was independent of the required health class, but it did take place at the school. It was one week, 40 minutes a day to learn about the baby simulator and a few other basics. Students at schools in the intervention group only cared for the baby for 64 hours: 4 days x 16 hours. 'Free childcare' was mandated for the 8 hours they were at school, as they were turned off during the school day.
> Individual participants were not blinded to their group assignment and upon giving consent were aware whether they were participating in the VIP intervention or control arm of the Trial.
So my read of the results is that participants who were interested in having a child (and were in an intervention school) selected into the VIP program. Participants in the control schools were a more random group.
The current status quo is only poor and rich people have children, but the middle class often cannot afford to, and we try rationalize that by saying the poor children will make up for it, but children raised by poor families are much more likely to be a net cost to society, not to mention the moral failure.
Even if for environmental reasons, the results of not acknowledging the real problem have been disastrous. We know that people struggling to pay rent will never prioritize environmental causes because they simply can't afford to, so addressing the economic issues will need to be part of the formula anyhow.
The middle class has lots of kids and more than the rich. You could probably find some set of the hyper-rich that start having more children, but it is basically irrelevant to the general trend
https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-fam...
First, they only had the students care for the simulated baby for five days, and 'childcare' was provided for free during their school day (they had to turn it off during the school day). Five days is not long enough for the novelty to wear off and the day-to-day reality to kick in.
Second, the dolls are not a good simulation of what it is actually like to care for a baby. It's a step up from a tamagotchi. Changing a diaper on a real baby is nothing like changing a diaper on one of these dolls. Real babies scream and cry much louder, and often don't stop even if you do everything right.
>The infant simulator-based VIP programme did not achieve its aim of reducing teenage pregnancy. Girls in the intervention group were more likely to experience a birth or an induced abortion than those in the control group before they reached 20 years of age.
I'd assume something like having a baby would have an even stronger tendency to do that.
https://www.jrf.org.uk/report/planned-teenage-pregnancy-view...
From the article:
> Many mothers spoke of their love of babies, often heightened by experience caring for other children."
Specifically what is wrong with teenage pregnancy? I've never understood the shame that is associated with it the West. The vast majority of arguments that can be made against teenage pregnancy can be made against single mums, yet we seem to celebrate them if anything (at least here in the UK).
Having kids is one of the most selfless and rewarding things someone can do. While I agree economically it would be preferable to encourage people not to have kids and to focus on careers instead I struggle to justify using this as a reason to discourage people from having children.
That said, I suppose the financial situation of the parents could be a factor here depending on the country. Generally teenage parents won't have very high income, but in the UK this wouldn't be an issue. One of the primary reasons women in my family have kids young is for the financial security. Here in the UK having kids is one of the best paths to moving out of your parents home in your 20s if you're from a working class background. But again, this financial argument applies in many other situations. Should single mums not have kids? Should people who can't work because of a disability not have kids? etc...
The only other reason I've heard is that teenage parents are too immature to raise children. I don't accept this. The easy argument to make against this is that there are plenty of immature people among my family and friends who have kids. Many of whom do drugs and are generally not great members of society. These people have never been discourage by the state not to have more kids. There are lots of very mature teenagers who can raise children just fine. But I'll accept this is more subjective and nuanced position which I'll need to defend, and I'm happy to do so if necessary.
I guess could someone just give a good argument against teenage pregnancy? Ideally one argument that doesn't rely on your subjective values about what a fulfilling life involves? I'll note that I'm talking ~15+ here. My understanding is that there could be pregnancy complications younger than this, although I'll add this applies to older individuals too where I believe similar disincentives should be applied (40+).
I mean, I don't think there's any arguments that don't involve subjective values in these points, but one could be made that having a child early prevents teenage mothers from attaining the further education and ensuing great chance at financial independence. It's sort of assumed you'll go from high school to university to earn a degree or some sort of post secondary training. It becomes much harder when you have a young child.
I'm in the US, where this kind of statement literally baffles my mind, because the opposite is true. In the US, having children is a financial liability and burden. Even for the poorest unemployed single mothers who do qualify for government benefits, it's a net financial loss to have a child. Our food assistance programs are pathetic and the shame of the developed world. Childcare is unaffordable even for entry-level tech workers these days. Students who have a child during high/secondary school graduate at 10% of the rate of those who don't.
> I guess could someone just give a good argument against teenage pregnancy? Ideally one argument that doesn't rely on your subjective values about what a fulfilling life involves?
Any question about the role of government (especially around family planning) ultimately is a question about what it means to have a society that supports living the good life. So for millennia, we have been arguing about what the good life is. A good answer to your question must recognize that in a society, we have to come to a consensus around subjective values about what a fulfilling live involves, in order to make rational decisions about how to further those agreed-upon ends.
If you try using an 'objective' metric to avoid making decisions based on subjective values, then you're just not noticing the subjective values that are correlated with using that metric over others. The school graduation stat I cited earlier has a value built in: it assumes that all other things equal, it is a bad thing for students to not complete secondary school, because it gives the foundation to be a good member of a good society.
The UK is interesting. Most of my middle class colleagues can't really afford children so if they have them will have them later in life and maybe have one or two. But my working class family and school friends have loads of kids, and this is fairly normal here. The affordability issues of having kids exists here, but only if you're working. If you don't work having a kid fast tracks you to council housing and gives you extra disposable income. Another "hack" most of my family do is then to get their kids diagnosed with behavioural issues and then you'll "make" another ~£1,000/month tax free.
What I'm saying here though is quite controversial. A lot of middle-class people will accuse me of lying and suggest that working class people really want to work. They do not accept people choose to go on benefits because living in a £350,00 home and not having to work is a better lifestyle for the majority of people from my background because a £15,000/year job isn't even going to get you a small flat here.
> Any question about the role of government (especially around family planning) ultimately is a question about what it means to have a society that supports living the good life. So for millennia, we have been arguing about what the good life is. A good answer to your question must recognize that in a society, we have to come to a consensus around subjective values about what a fulfilling live involves, in order to make rational decisions about how to further those agreed-upon ends.
I think my issue with teenage pregnancy is that it's used as a heuristic based on middle-class assumptions about what a good life involves and when a responsible individual should become a parent. Perhaps part of the reason I have a different view here is because for most women in my family being a mum is so important and going to college and pursuing some grand career is largely a waste of time when you couldn't even get decent grades in school.
If I had a child and they had a kid young I'd be a little disappointed I think because I'd like my child to do something more novel with their life which generally requires a good education. But this is my middle class aspirations speaking. A lot of people rightly value family over their career I think. This is perhaps especially true of women.
Your point that some adults aren't responsible parents is valid but it doesn't follow that teenager parents can only be just as irresponsible and not more.
The financial and emotional requirements that come with having a child are very significant and would be a giant weight for someone who has very little life and interpersonal experience.
It then became part of broader family planning infrastructure.