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Prevent Teenage
Pregnancies?
By David Brindley
This story appears in the February 2018 issue of National Geographic magazine.
Jefrin Bayona is already running late for school and it’s just after 6 a.m. “I
barely slept last night,” the 15-year-old student says. “The baby woke me up at
10, 12, four in the morning.” Classes start early here in the rural plains of
northeastern Colombia. Standing in the dark kitchen of his home, Jefrin drags
a hand down his tired face between sips of hot chocolate. Estiven, his infant
son, silently sits in a baby carrier on the sparse living room floor.
Fortunately for Jefrin his early foray into fatherhood ends today. He’s
participating in an immersive school program that aims to prevent teenage
pregnancy. “Estiven” is actually a robotic baby designed to simulate a needy
one-month-old—crying at programmed intervals day and night to provoke
students to feed and burp the baby and change its diaper. The responses are
tracked and recorded, and students are graded on how quickly they react. A
baby left unattended for too long will shut down, affecting the student’s grade.
Jefrin has taken care of the baby for the past 48 hours, and the typically
outgoing and buoyant teen is clearly exhausted. He arrives at school five
minutes after the bell and hands the baby off to fellow student, and designated
mother, Alexandra Guerrero, 15, for the next two-day shift.
Worldwide some 17 million teenage girls give birth every year, facing
increased risk of health complications during pregnancy as well as lifelong
economic challenges for themselves and their families.Education and dreams
of advancement are often derailed for these young mothers. Latin America has
the third highest teenage pregnancy rate in the world. While the global rate
has declined over the past decade, the pace of decline in Latin America lags
behind that of other regions. In Colombia one in five mothers is between 15
and 19 years old; poor rural teens are at the greatest risk of early pregnancy.
“Sex education and the baby simulation are both important; they reinforce
each other,” says Camila Guzmán, director of the program ¿Bebé? ¡Piénsalo
Bien!—or Baby? Think It Over!—in Colombia. “The objective isn’t to scare the
students. We want to create a consciousness about sex and pregnancy. It’s OK
for them to have kids—when they’re ready.”
The robotic babies were developed in the United States more than 20 years
ago, and the program has been implemented around the world. But it is
relatively expensive—costing more than $100 per student here in Colombia
and requiring multiple instructors. That raises questions of scalability in
developing countries with scarce resources. Yet the program has proved
effective. In a study of more than 1,400 student participants in one region of
Colombia, the program reduced the teen pregnancy rate by 40 percent.