Lifelike baby dolls actually raise pregnancy rates
ENGLAND - Lifelike baby dolls designed to deter teenage girls from having children actually raise pregnancy rates, a major study suggests. The teenage pregnancy prevention programme, which is used in schools around the world, does not seem to work, according to the first proper trial to test it.
Girls who took part were more, not less, likely to become pregnant compared to those who did not take part. The Virtual Infant Parenting programme, and others like it, involve a £1,000 ($1,300) doll which cries when it needs to be fed, burped, rocked or changed. It measures and reports if the doll is mishandled, left to cry, or left unchanged. The theory was that looking after the baby for a few days would expose girls to the reality of teenage parenthood. But the new trial, which involved nearly 3,000 girls aged 13 to 15, found pregnancy rates actually went up.
The study authors, whose work is published in the Lancet medical journal, suspect the attention given to the girls when they were looking after the dolls encouraged them to have a baby.
Dr Sally Brinkman, of the University of Western Australia, said: “Our study shows the pregnancy prevention programme, which involves an infant simulator, does not reduce the risk of pregnancy in teenage girls. In fact, the risk of pregnancy is actually increased compared to girls who didn’t take part in the intervention. Similar programmes are increasingly being offered in schools around the world, and evidence now suggests they do not have the desired long-term effect of reducing teenage pregnancy. These interventions are likely to be an ineffective use of public resources for pregnancy prevention.”
Half of the girls who took part in the study used the dolls for six days, and the others were simply given normal classroom sexual education. They were then tracked until the age of 20. The authors found 8 per cent of the girls given a doll had at least one birth, and 9 per cent had an abortion. In the group not given the doll, 4 per cent had a baby and 6 per cent had an abortion. Nicole Chavaudra, teenage pregnancy strategy co-ordinator in Rotherham, oversaw a similar plan in 2007.
Writing in the British Medical Journal at the time, she said: ‘For many young people at particular risk of becoming teenage parents the attention received whilst caring for the doll reinforces the desire for parenthood.
(dailymail.co.uk)