Dolls used to deter girls from getting pregnant make babies more likely!
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 in 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 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 are looking after the dolls encourage them to have a baby.
Dr Sally Brinkman, of the University of Western Australia, said: ‘Our study shows that the 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 – published in the Lancet medical journal – used the dolls for six days, while the others were simply given normal classroom sexual education. They were then tracked until the age of 20.
The authors found that 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.
Similar prevention programmes have been operating in parts of Britain. Birmingham, West Sussex and South Yorkshire have used virtual babies in the past, but Nicole Chavaudra, teenage pregnancy strategy coordinator in Rotherham, was a critic. 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.’
Clare Murphy, director of external affairs at pregnancy advisory group BPAS, said last night that there had ‘long been reservations’ about the effectiveness of using dolls.
‘Probably a lot depends on the context in which they are used,’ she said. ‘The teenage pregnancy rate in this country has dropped dramatically in recent years for a variety of reasons – it’s very unlikely to be related to these dolls.’
But Timmothy Boettcher, the chief executive of the firm that made the ‘ baby simulators’ used in the study, insisted its programme was effective – and claimed the researchers had not followed its curriculum.
He told the Sydney Morning Herald: ‘I am flattered that people are looking at new ways to use parts of our product.
‘It, however, is not the same as using the product we sell in the way we provide it.’
‘Ineffective use of resources’