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 The Baby Makers
by Claudio Cricca
When I was a teenager, I'd heard of that exercise where high-school students carried around faux babies for a week, but only in the context of a sitcom plot, which usually involved sacks of sugar or flour swaddled in blankets and invariably lost, then recovered just in time for hugs, lessons and pledges of abstinence.
Time moves on, things get a bit more literal. Baby Think It Over, Inc., is Wisconsin company that makes animatronic "baby simulators" for sex-ed classes. Photojournalist Claudio Cricca followed a class that used the simulators, and went inside the company's factories. The dolls are the size of a three month old, weigh ten pounds, are anatomically correct and available in various racial models. A computer chip in the back of each simulator makes it cry at pre-programmed intervals, at which point it must be "soothed" with a key the student inserts in the baby's back. The baby must be fed, changed, rocked and attended to every few hours. Teachers can program the babies at one of fifteen different "difficulty levels." Sensors monitor the quality of care the baby receives and generate printable reports.
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