Empathy

oggbashan

Dying Truth seeker
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Article from The Times:

September 05, 2003
Empathy Belly means boys are left holding the baby
By Alexandra Frean, Social Affairs Correspondent

TEENAGE boys are to find out what it means to get a girl pregnant; by using a water-filled fat suit that allows them to experience the physical discomforts of carrying a baby. Secondary school children in Manchester will be the first to try on the Empathy Belly, which simulates 20 physical symptoms of carrying a baby. These include shortness of breath, increased blood pressure and lower back ache, not to mention the waddling gait and change in sexual self image that can result from a 30lb weight gain.

Its American makers also boast that it will also induce;fatigue, irritability, and much, much more! Erica Powell, a youth worker with Barnardos in Manchester, said that she hoped that its use would help shatter some romantic illusions youngsters can associate with pregnancy. She intends to use the £940 pregnancy simulator with schoolchildren aged between 11 and 14 in the deprived Benchill area of the city, where the rate of teenage conception is 49.8 per 1,000 teenage girls; the national average is 43.8.

"We have one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancy in the country. I hope that it will help the young people realise that when you are pregnant, or wearing an Empathy Belly, it's not always that easy," she said. "It's not a very glamorous feeling. Bending down, for example, can be quite hard."

Ms Powell said that she hoped that boys would get a feel for how much extra weight women had to carry when pregnant. "The girls," she added, "would have a chance to see what they looked like when they were carrying extra weight." "Most girls don't realise what it would be like to be fat,"she said.

Ms Powell plans to start using the Empathy Belly this term with Year Eight pupils, aged 13, during teenage pregnancy prevention sessions she holds in local secondary schools. She already uses "virtual babies" life-sized models that emit a loud, prolonged and realistic cry if they are not fed and changed regularly.

"With the virtual babies some of them can't cope with being woken up in the middle of the night and others can't cope with supporting the baby's head and holding it properly, but others cope really well. Whether they can cope or not, none of them really like it," she said.

"Using simulators allows you to say to them: "How to do think a mother feels when she has to go to the shops with her baby? How do you think a pregnant woman feels?" The idea is to show them exactly how it feels and then to use this as a basis for discussion and information."

The Empathy Belly simulates the effect of pregnancy through the use of a rib belt and positioning of weighted components: lead balls are inserted to produce the feeling of the baby's limbs sticking into the mother's rib cage and a sandbag attached under the belly presses on the bladder.

It was originally developed to help men increase their sense of involvement with their pregnant partner. The user manual says: "Realising first-hand that her discomforts are genuine and that pregnancy requires significant effort and adjustment on the women's part, expectant fathers invariably increase their appreciation, communication and supportive behaviour."

It is widely in use in teenage pregnancy prevention programmes in America, where paediatricians say that one session with the Empathy Belly can be worth more than an entire lecture on the subject.

"I can't play football wearing this lot" ANDREW BRIDGE, 15, who supports Manchester United and wants to be a builder, found out yesterday that being pregnant isn't much fun. He had donned a gallon and half of warm water, two heavy lead weights and an ugly stone-coloured canvas contraption with Velcro straps called the "Empathy Belly Pregnancy Simulator".

At the risk of some ribbing from his friends in the playground, he agreed to model the ungainly equipment designed to impress on teenagers exactly how pregnancy transforms the body. Andrew, whose mother works at Family Action Benchill in Wythenshawe, where the simulator will undergo trials, insisted that he has no plans for early parenthood. Trying it on had only reinforced his view.

"It is uncomfortably heavy. I like playing football and tenpin bowling. You would not be able to do that wearing this lot. I prefer to be a boy," he said. Andrew, a pupil at Parklands High School, was watched with some concern by his mother, Karen, 38, a family support worker, who has four children, aged 21 to six. She believed that it was a salutary experience.

"If boys get a chance to wear it then, as a mum, I think that would be a good thing," she said. "They can get to understand at least something of what a woman goes through.

*****

I saw one of these over 10 years ago. Anyone tried one?

Og
 
Dear Og,
I'm glad you brought the above to our attention. I've seldom run across anything that seems more stupid.
MG
 
Giving teenage girls strap on's so that they can experience what it's like to have a penis seems more stupid:D
 
Unless Ms Powell has some method of locking the device about the youth for at least five or six months, and then, as she removes it, drags a baseball out though the kids uretha, I can't see that the experience is in the least bit similar.

If Ms Powell does have such a method, and indeed intends to use it, I hope she also has plans to supply the kid with about twenty years of psychiatric care.

BTW: That wouldn't be Ms Baden-Powell would it?
 
I have to get in here. I see how this subject can be a joke or a topic for sarcasm, or even irony, but the thinking behind this effort really disturbs me, pisses me off righteously.

The idea that having a large abdomen and weighing an extra 20+ pounds is the focus of a pregnancy is so off base. It’s as silly as putting someone in a jail cell for an hour or a night thinking they can know what it’s like for the person who has to be there months or years or a lifetime.

That was not a slip using a prison reference for my analogy. Being pregnant, particularly the second half or last trimester can be very hard on a woman’s body and psyche. The anxiety with a first pregnancy can only be understood by others who have experienced it.

And let's not mention the real labor and delivery and then the lifetime of labor, albeit with love, and responsibility that follows.

I won’t go on, but I couldn’t let this become an ordinary silly thread. Fuck, and to think this thing is going on within an educational system.
 
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%@&(_%_(@&_!#&%(@(&R stupid double post machine!!!
 
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Dear Perdita,
You can say that again.
MG
Ps. Like I said above, the whole damn idea is idiotic, and I can't see it doing anything but making everyone involved feel silly.
 
I think any effort whatsoever to inject a little unglamorous reality into premature would-be parents is laudable.

I don't believe it was being presented as a definitive demonstration of what pregnancy is.

There is clearly no way a man could ever personally experience the gambit of biochemical and physiological aspects of pregnancy- any more than I could ever truly understand the sensation of having external genitalia. But I don't think simulation exercises should be discounted because they attempt to show some of those aspects, even if they are the most simplistic physical ones.

I'd cheerfully wear a therapeutic nutsac-truss to better emphasize with my dear brethren....

mlle
 
MlledeLaPlumeBleu said:
I'd cheerfully wear a therapeutic nutsac-truss
Dear Blu,
There are others here who probably would, too. For their own reasons, though.
MG
 
yeah, what she said....

This article reminds me of the home economics project in my high school in which girls carried around 10 pound bags of flour as their "baby" to teach them the burden of parenting.

Sheeshhh

IMHO one of the biggest problems in our society is parents being more concerned with their convenience and comfort than nurturing their children. Having a project that just emphasizes, as Perdita stated, the physical discomforts and inconveniences reinforces the mindset that "kids are an inconvenience".

Damn, I had four awful pregnancies. My last one had me on bed rest for six months with really painful shots for the first 12 weeks. I now have the privelege of knowing four delightful girls.

My four daughters were the focus of every pregnancy. It was about a new person, not weight gain, throwing up and stretch marks.

This article shows the great lengths that "education experts" will go to to avoid true academic achievement for their students.

:rose: b
 
MlledeLaPlumeBleu said:
I think any effort whatsoever to inject a little unglamorous reality into premature would-be parents is laudable.

I don't believe it was being presented as a definitive demonstration of what pregnancy is.
Lovebug, I agree with you above, but I think this particular attempt is laughable and focuses on an aspect of pregnancy that can only solicit the worst of adolescent humor. How can a 'system' address pregnancy to an audience who probably cannot envisage their own mothers as real persons? (Rhetorical q.)

Trova-femmebot
 
Re: yeah, what she said....

bridgetkeeney said:
This article shows the great lengths that "education experts" will go to to avoid true academic achievement for their students.
Hiya, Bridget,
They probably got academic credit for the foolishness, too. The teacher undoubtedly published it.
MG
 
MlledeLaPlumeBleu said:
. . . I'd cheerfully wear a therapeutic nutsac-truss to better emphasize with my dear brethren....mlle

Er . . . what exactly is a therapeutic nutsac-truss :confused:

Something else from those Baden-Powell people :rolleyes:
 
Quasi, I'm only being blunt, I don't want to be impolite but I, personally, cannot appreciate your humor right now.

I know this is the AH and we're all one big family or clique or gang, but if you're not a woman I can't take your humor at the moment. I did appreciate your comment above, but please don't hijack this thread for a laugh.

Perdita
 
What I want to know is why schools even bother w/ this type of thing. It only hands the kids a farrago of lies. I understand what they're trying to do but to me it's like making the kids go a day w/o food and then saying that's what it's like to be starving. I had to do that flour bag project and believe me after being a live in nanny for a family w/ 9 kids I can tell you that project was worthless. Also in many schools in the US if a teen becomes pregnant once she starts to show she's "asked" to leave school. You can always go to court and battle the school board but not many do that. How many girls do you think go back and finish?
 
I have to go against the populist opinion and tell you I think it's a good idea.
To all of you who think it's a waste of money and effort; I'd like to hear what you'd say to a horny kid, who has been a victim of the failing public educational system, when all he wants to do is stick it in the little hottie who'd rather fill the condom with water than have him use it. Would you reason with him or would you show him that the results of his 90 seconds of pleasure could be ruining 3 lives at least?
At least if he has to experience a poor facsimile of gestation for a week he has been shown a bit of what it could be like to live a moment in the mother's shoes and if he has to carry around a wailing "doll" for a week afterwards, even better.
I consider this a far better alternative for the one couple it may influence away from pregnancy than any amount of family planning councilling or welfare could be if they weren't.
 
Champagne: I get your point, as I got Mlle's, but I assert it's a stupid idea. In that moment when a boy and girl are about to have sex I cannot believe the memory of the empathy belly is going to wilt a teenage boy's prick if he does not already have a care about his girl or more importantly his own future.

These children most likely know at least one if not several pregnant girls or teenage mums and their circumstances (dropping out of school, having no social life, etc.) If that does not effect their hormonal urges this contraption and all the educational paraphernalia associated with it will not. It is still difficult enough getting mature men to empathize with their pregnant partners let alone teenage boys.

I note Ms. Powell says, "Most girls don't realise what it would be like to be fat." That disqualifies her as an educator right there. Pregant women aren't fat, they're pregnant.

Perdita
 
perdita said:
Quasi, I'm only being blunt, I don't want to be impolite but I, personally, cannot appreciate your humor right now.

I know this is the AH and we're all one big family or clique or gang, but if you're not a woman I can't take your humor at the moment. I did appreciate your comment above, but please don't hijack this thread for a laugh.
Dear Perdita,
I don't understand that attitude at all. The entire subject is laughable. I'm sure that's how Og approached it when he started the thing.
MG
C'mon, Quaz. We'll start our own thread.
 
MG: It's not an attitude. I thought I made myself clear, plus stated I did not want to be impolite. Yes, it's laughable to some extent, but not that far with me is all. I think I've said all I care to say so please do what you will now. I'm fine, just needed to speak my mind.

finis, Perdita
 
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OK, gotta get my 2 cents worth in here. I agree this is not funny. I also agree that the wrong impression is being given to a bunch of young people who already are being taught every which way they turn that an attention span is a bad thing. Considering the availability of a morning after pill in society today, no woman should contemplate pregnancy without the understanding that this is an 18+ year project they are taking-on.

Among the reasons I am glad I am not a woman:
1) morning sickness
2) having to perform aerobics to put pants on
3) pantyhose
4) bras
5) g-strings, thongs, etc. (like any lascivious minded man I love the way they look, but were I a woman I would have to agree with Diane Ford who said "I spent my entire life trying to keep my panties out of my crack - why would I put something there on purpose?)
6) monthly periods (if you think young girls panic when this first happens, if it happened to men there wouldn't be enought room in all the mental hospitals combined to hold us)
7) shitting a watermelon (as my wife puts it) then being told, 'now that wasn't so bad was it? my wife's nurse at the first delivery darned near got a broken jaw for that one - I like my wife, she's got the kind of attitude I think all ladies need.)

Here's my point, I think women are the stronger sex. And as you can tell, they are very protective of that power that they have and rightfully so.
 
OK, gotta get my 2 cents worth in here. I agree this is not funny. I also agree that the wrong impression is being given to a bunch of young people who already are being taught every which way they turn that an attention span is a bad thing. Considering the availability of a morning after pill in society today, no woman should contemplate pregnancy without the understanding that this is an 18+ year project they are taking-on.

Among the reasons I am glad I am not a woman:
1) morning sickness
2) having to perform aerobics to put pants on
3) pantyhose
4) bra
5) g-strings, thongs, etc. (like any lascivious minded man I love the way they look, but were I a woman I would have to agree with Diane Ford who said "I spent my entire life trying to keep my panties out of my crack - why would I put something there on purpose?)
6) monthly periods (if you think young girls panic when this first happens, if it happened to men there wouldn't be enought room in all the mental hospitals combined to hold us)
7) shitting a watermelon (as my wife puts it) then being told, 'now that wasn't so bad was it? my wife's nurse at the first delivery darned near got a broken jaw for that one - I like my wife, she's got the kind of attitude I think all ladies need.)

Here's my point, I think women are the stronger sex. And as you can tell, they are very protective of that power that they have and rightfully so.

p.s. I agree with Robert Heinlein who said "The most beautiful woman in the world is a pregnant woman because she is the embodiment of the future."
 
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champagne1982 said:
I have to go against the populist opinion and tell you I think it's a good idea.
To all of you who think it's a waste of money and effort; I'd like to hear what you'd say to a horny kid, who has been a victim of the failing public educational system, when all he wants to do is stick it in the little hottie who'd rather fill the condom with water than have him use it. Would you reason with him or would you show him that the results of his 90 seconds of pleasure could be ruining 3 lives at least?
At least if he has to experience a poor facsimile of gestation for a week he has been shown a bit of what it could be like to live a moment in the mother's shoes and if he has to carry around a wailing "doll" for a week afterwards, even better.
I consider this a far better alternative for the one couple it may influence away from pregnancy than any amount of family planning councilling or welfare could be if they weren't.

I understand what you're saying but my imho this is not the way it is. If they want to show Kids what it's like to have a baby they need to take them to a daycare or some similarly controled enviorment w/ kids. Then assign each person a baby to take care of there would be supervision but no help. Baby dolls and bags of flour ar a lark but I bet more than half of these kids have no idea what a colicky baby is like. Those memories might stop them in their tracks. Also it might be helpful to have the kids price diapers and wipes and formula health insurance and all the things you'd need for a baby not to mention housing and the daycare they'd need because they'd have to work . Then let them go see what most jobs pay teenage kids also see what jobs they can get w/o a Highschool diploma. Then they could advise the young males what the child support would be out of their checks for the next 18 years should they impregnate a girl. None of this would even come close to what it would really be like since once you have a child you can't just give it back as in the daycare scenerio, but it would be a helluva lot better than a bag of flour. I'll bet that those suits are just a laugh among the teens too. It's laughable in a way that's not really humorous at all.
 
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I have to agree with Perdita.

The man or boy that this device is intended to "educate" is unlikely to change his negative opinion of women.

The ones who would understand it probably don't need it.

It might have a temporary impact on teenage girls by getting them to modify their romantic view of having a baby but I'm sure it won't be any use in the heat of a sexual encounter to counteract the effect of alcohol and lust.

I think it is a toy for Social Workers to help them pretend they are changing attitudes. They probably complete a sheaf of forms every time they persuade someone to wear it.

Did you notice that the boy was the son of a type of "Social Worker"? I assume he was bribed with the promise of several late night passes to wear it for the photographer.

Og (who wears a false belly on top of his real belly to pretend to be Henry VIII. It is a useful place to keep the cans of beer.)
 
la la land

champagne1982 said:
I have to go against the populist opinion and tell you I think it's a good idea.
To all of you who think it's a waste of money and effort; I'd like to hear what you'd say to a horny kid, who has been a victim of the failing public educational system, when all he wants to do is stick it in the little hottie who'd rather fill the condom with water than have him use it. Would you reason with him or would you show him that the results of his 90 seconds of pleasure could be ruining 3 lives at least?
At least if he has to experience a poor facsimile of gestation for a week he has been shown a bit of what it could be like to live a moment in the mother's shoes and if he has to carry around a wailing "doll" for a week afterwards, even better.
I consider this a far better alternative for the one couple it may influence away from pregnancy than any amount of family planning councilling or welfare could be if they weren't.

I would be laughing if this wasn't so ridiculous.

As Og mentioned, in the midst of alcohol and testosterone the brain functioning diminishes to primality (if it isn't a word, it should be). The only thing that keeps him from "sticking it in the little hottie" is for him to make a decision way ahead of that point and not getting in that situation. I think Destinie's suggestion is a lot more sobering in that respect.

I agree, though, that this "exercise" is merely demeaning to women. For the little pricks that have a "fuck the little ho" attitude, it will just reinforce their stereotype that women are weak.

:rose: b
 
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