Anti-pregnancy dolls backfire as girls start to fall pregnant

LONDON: Lifelike baby dolls designed to deter teenage girls from having children actually raise pregnancy rates, a study suggests.

The teenage pregnancy prevention programme, which is used at schools in Britain and worldwide, does not appear to work, say the researchers.

Girls who took part were more, not less, likely to become pregnant compared with those who did not take part.

The Virtual Infant Parenting programme, and others like it, involve the use of a £1 000 (about R19 000) doll that cries when it needs to be fed, winded, rocked or changed.

It measures and records if the doll is mishandled, left to cry or left unchanged.

Experts thought that looking after the doll for a few days would expose teenage girls to the reality of looking after a baby.

But in the new Australian study involving nearly 3 000 girls aged 13 to 15, pregnancy rates actually went up.

Experts suspect that 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: “These interventions are likely to be an ineffective use of public resources for pregnancy prevention.”

No such tests have been done in South Africa. – Daily Mail