the night ten of my daughters gave birth
About 20 years ago, I was working as a houseparent in a group home for adoles-
cent girls. With an average of 20 residents and an all-but-me female staff, I was
at sea in an ocean of estrogen. To try to fit in, I would retain fluids once a month;
but they told me a thermos didn’t count.
The home’s social worker got 10 of the girls enrolled in an innovative program to
teach them the responsibility of parenting. They attended classes on the physical,
emotional and financial costs of child-bearing. Then they got “pregnant”. They
took turns wearing a rig that simulated carrying a baby. They wouldn’t let me
try it as a gesture of empathy, but one girl offered to slug me in the bladder.
Shortly after supper chores one night, the social worker announced on the P.A.
system “Ladies, your time has come. Report to the van.” They were going to the
hospital. I drove. They really got into the spirit of it. When I rattled over some
railroad tracks, one of them yelled “My water just broke!”
At the maternity ward, each girl did symbolic paperwork for admission, was briefly
examined by a nurse, and received a doll. The girls were to treat the dolls as infants
for two weeks. Then they could keep the dolls or return them to the program for
$10 each.
The girls were required to have the dolls with them at all times, except when they
went to school. Then they had to arrange for daycare, which consisted of lining the
“babies” up in front of the staff office in the commons area. One day when the girls
were gone, the social worker put a small Tootsie Roll in each diaper. Judging from
the “ewwwwwwws” of the “moms”, they still had a lot to learn.
For more realism, the staff played a tape of a real baby crying over the P.A. system
in the middle of the night. The girls were told to get up and find out why their kids
were upset. The other girls found this most annoying. Actually, the “moms” did too.
The program made its point. I don’t know how the girls fared after they left the
home, but they got to face a fundamental challenge of life with lots of support. At
the end of the two weeks, 8 of the girls chose to keep their “babies”. The girl who
might have learned the most returned her doll, saying “I’m nowhere near ready
for this.”
The other girl who returned hers simply shrugged “I need the $10 for car tags.”
