Oh, Baby! This Is No Fun

The eggs and flour sacks, better suited for frying omelets or baking cakes, have been sent back to the kitchen in La Habra.

In their place, the city’s two middle schools use lifelike computerized dolls that wail through the night to teach students the consequences of sex.

And the dolls are working better than the baking materials ever did.

Students in Imperial Middle School’s one-semester life skills class unanimously pledge to stay away from teen parenting in the essays they submit after keeping the babies for 48 hours, said their teacher, Judy Mazzarella.

“They think they’re really cute in the beginning,” Mazzarella said. “But they learn they’re a pain.”

After about one student pregnancy per year at Imperial previously, Principal Betty Bidwell said she has seen none in the three years since the electronic babies were introduced.

The seven-pound dolls cry at unpredictable hours and can be quieted only by inserting keys in their backs. An electronic device in each doll powered by four AA batteries keeps track of how many minutes the babies cried, how many times they were hit or dropped and how many times they suffered neglect.

“It cried seven times in ONE night,” wrote Crystal Sanchez, 14, in her essay. “The first night was so hard, the next day I was ready to pawn the darn baby to whoever wanted it.”

The simulation assignment is part of the sex education curriculum in Imperial’s required Skills for Adolescence class. The class emphasizes abstinence as the only foolproof birth-control method and doesn’t teach students about condoms or the pill, Mazzarella said.

Students who choose not to take an electronic doll home must research the costs of caring for a newborn baby and submit a report.

If they have to take tests during which a crying baby would be too much of a distraction, the students get to drop the bundle off at “day care” during the school day. But they have to pay for it by doing chores for a teacher.

The $250 dolls have been on the market since 1995 and are sold by Wisconsin-based Baby Think It Over Inc.--prompting one Imperial student to comment, “Baby! I thought it over!”

A company spokeswoman said no studies have tracked pregnancy rates for students who use the dolls in their classes, but anecdotal evidence from around the country indicates they turn teens off to child-rearing.

Essays submitted to Mazzarella last week described a maddening search for child care so a student could play softball and one family’s insistence that their son sleep in the living room, where the baby’s cries wouldn’t wake the rest of the household.

The Junior League of Orange County purchased the dolls in 1996, and schools in Irvine, Costa Mesa, Yorba Linda and Placentia took turns using them, said Vicki Hassman, a former community director.

They were recently given as a gift to the La Habra schools and are shared between Imperial and Washington middle schools.

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At Washington, where Judy Thomas uses the dolls in her elective life skills class, last Tuesday was the big day when students met their temporary infant charges for the first time.

Students arrived for class with diaper bags, blankets and tiny clothes and began clamoring for particular genders as Thomas passed out the dolls.

Thomas stopped and said, in all seriousness: “Do you get to choose in real life?” That quieted the class, which did get to pick names for their newborns.

The girls in the class had trouble containing their excitement, gathering around the first student to receive a doll, cooing and petting it.

“It’s going to be a new experience taking care of the baby, and I’m going to learn to be more responsible,” said Antonia Julio, 13, proudly cradling the doll in her arms.

By Thursday, Antonia had a different tale to tell.

“It woke me up at 1 o’clock,” she said, carrying her doll, named Angel, in a blue blanket.

Denise McLeod said she had to tend to her baby, Daniel James, for a total of five hours Wednesday night.

The 14-year-old said she won’t want a baby “until I’m about 30 years old.”

“We want the kids to decide this is not what they need in their lives until they’re settled as adults,” Thomas said.

“With the eggs and the flour sacks, they didn’t take it as seriously. They didn’t make the connection of how it would affect their lives so dreadfully.”