I’ve seen this in various media, seems to be basically a trope.
Pupils get handed a breakable object and take care of it like a baby. I assume it’s to train responsibleness or scare kids about unprotected sex.
But is it really real? Or even common?
But it
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It depends on the school.
I never did this. We made Rube Goldberg machines and dropped eggs from a height to try and stop from cracking. But we were never given a fake baby to take care of.
We did dissect pig fetuses, though.
I’m a bit older (32), but I had to take care of an egg. We even painted them in school and were paired up with partners. I broke my kid when I opened the car door and it fell out ;( lol
My school had robot babies that had sensors for if you, like, slammed their head into a locker or whatever, but my mom had to take care of an egg in school.
Our Home Ec teacher had us take care of an egg for a week. She signed the bottom of each one to keep us from replacing the egg if something happened.
Mine got dropped somehow. Her signature was easy to forge.
Its on the old-fashioned end of things. My school never did anything like that, though.
Some schools have a special baby doll that tracks things like drops, how long it takes to fill a need (which you insert a key for), so it better simulates actually taking care of a baby.
It has happened.
Never had to do that. I don’t know anyone my age who did. I think maybe my mom had to do that? But it’s not a universal tradition by any means.
My friends had bags of flour, I babysat during their gym classes.
Some schools do this, or they did when I was that age (late 90s – early 00s).
In middle school, my health class had the “Baby Think It Over”, a plastic doll that would cry at random intervals and you had to soothe it properly within a certain timeframe. We each had a turn taking it home overnight. Mine only cried twice during that time, and I found out afterward from the teacher that they put it on the easiest setting for me. I guess they had profiled me as not being likely to experience teen pregnancy. But I remember being disappointed that I didn’t get a more realistic simulation.
I did this in Grade 7, in the early 1990s. We had to hollow out an egg and take care to not break it for a week or two. This was for Health class, to simulate how fragile human babies are.
Now some schools get life-like dolls that cry and need to be fed, held, and changed. I’d say they are much more realistic for teaching what a large respect a child is, or at least more realistic than a hollowed-out egg.
My school had the robotic babies.
I seem to vaguely recall people in Home Ec classes having to do it. I’m honestly not sure if it’s a real memory or one my brain is making up (it’s been a while). Either I way, I never had to do it.
Yeah I remember having to take care of an egg in middle school.
Kids these days have it easy. With shrinkflation, they only have to lug around a 4lb baby leaking powder everywhere.
That wasn’t a thing at my school
I took care of an egg with a partner in the late 80’s high school in California.
My high school offered a child development class that had to take care of an egg. I didn’t take this class so I never had to do it. I am in my 40s so this was before they had the electronic dolls that they use now.
My high school did eggs for psych class freshman year (back in 2008). Students were paired off and had to make the egg last a week. I told the teacher it was stupid and nothing like having an actual kid, so I had to write an essay about the effects/cost of pregnancy and parenthood or something like that.
The LPN students had the mechanical babies with different ‘need’ keys and movement sensors for their pediatric unit in senior year.
It depends on how old you are and how much money your school had and what classes you took and who your teachers were.
My cousin and I went to the same school but she was one year ahead of me.
In high school, she did have to take care of an egg for a week as if it were an infant.
I dreaded coming to this point in the class. But I need not have worried.
She had to do this for Humanities class and I did not take that class.
I wouldn’t say it’s super common, but it definitely happens. My sister had to carry around a teddy bear filled with 10 lbs of beans for a week for an elective class in high school. I took the same class a few years later and did not have to do that.
Honestly I was kinda disappointed I didn’t get to bring out the bean bear
I’m surprised by the amount of people who haven’t done this!
My middle school had us take care of a bag of flour for a week. We had to carry it with us everywhere (in the same room, not physically on us). It was kind of fun, to be honest.
I sure did in middle school health class. Had a bag of flour that was supposed to represent a baby. It was one of the dumbest things I’ve ever had to do in public education surpassing even the yearly requirements for square dancing.
I read about it in a book, and I was kind of excited for my flour sack baby. Alas, it isn’t a universal thing. IIRC though, my high school had a class where you could get a doll that cried and you could be graded on how well you took care of it – how often it was fed, diaper changed, or if it got dropped or something. Somehow that seemed less fun than a sack of flour. But I don’t recall ever actually seeing one, so either none of my friends took that class or I just have a false memory from some other book, lol.
I had to take care of a bag of flour, but it was like 35 years ago.
Yes I took care of an egg. Frankly it’s not an awful thing to teach kids some responsibility on how to not break shit, because many of them are very prone to do so. It took me too long to learn this lesson with electronics.
Also it’s somewhat fun.
We didn’t do that at my school because talking about infant children would imply that sex exists and we didn’t do sex ed.
I had some nephews have to keep a robotic baby doll that cried if you don’t feed it. This was just last week.
Apparently it would wake up throughout the night.
I get the point, but I don’t like the idea of making kids who already struggle with enough sleep more sleep deprived for a week.
Middle school, we had flour babies. By high school, the budget had apparently increased and we had robotic babies that cried and would record any mistreatment you inflicted on them.
In my school in the 1970s, girls went to home economics and boys went to wood shop once a week. I can totally see the girls having to do this in home-ec. Wood shop was making simple wood items like a shelf while not losing any fingers.
Some do, most do not, it’s over represented in media because it’s an easy interesting plot point.
Ww had high tech robot babies .. they woke up like 4 times in the night to eat and needing robot diaper changes..
My kids had a flour sack baby or a potato baby they had to take care of for 2 weeks.
I had to take care of a doll that was programmed to cry until I inserted the right key in its back and tracked things like if it was shaken. It was part of Home Ec class, but the premise behind it was wasted on me because I have siblings with a big enough age gap and used to babysit them after school for about an hour after I got to a certain age.
a lot of us (in my high school) took child development because we wanted the fake baby thing. Sadly the year we joined was the first year they took that feature away D:
Our school did the sack of flour thing.
I was in middle school in Texas in the mid 80s and we didn’t do that.
I took an optional child development class (as someone wanting to go into education after I graduated) in high school and we did have to do the baby thing for a few days, but we supplied our own dolls/objects to carry and it wasn’t all that serious.
I had a flour sack in highschool in the early 2000s. I know I had it dressed up in clothes but don’t remember much more than that.
We did the egg thing except it’s not a full egg, your supposed to poke a hole in the shell with a toothpick and then drain the inside of the egg through the hole and put a little bit of glue inside. You bring your egg from home in and the teacher makes a “special mark” on it to make sure you don’t replace the egg. Most people made little padded boxes to carry their eggs in. I don’t really remember there being a lot of discussion about parenting with the egg thing, at least not by the teachers, we thought it was funny to name, dress up, and obsess over the eggs as if they were children. It was all so goofy and we were willing to commit to the bit.
The robotic baby was optional for extra credit in middle school (8th grade so about age 13). I believe the robotic baby was required in one of the home Ec classes in high school but I don’t remember which one because I never took that class.
Sugar babies, yeah. We used bags of sugar.
There were classes at my school where kids had to do this, but I never did.
Might be outdated reference but as a Gen Xer, I can guarantee that we did. I still have pictures somewhere of mine. You would think that nuns at an all girls Catholic school would have had some prob with pretending 100 girls per year were unwed mothers!
My school has the robot babies but the class was optional.
We didn’t when I went to school in the south in the late 1970s early 1980s. To be fair, our sex ed was a one day class in P.E. where we guys were told to bathe, don’t masturbate, and stay away from “loose” girls. To say it was ineffective would be an understatement.
Yes! I’m Gen X and we did the flour sacks in high school (early 1990’s) and I think my sister did the eggs.
But I don’t think it’s as common anymore because my daughter didn’t do this and I never heard about it in her school. She graduated in 2022.
At my school, they had a child development class that you could take (basically working in the school daycare center and learning about working with young kids), and I think they had to do something like that as an assignment. I never took that class and didn’t have to do that.
We didn’t have this in my high school (graduated in 2008). But that was during a period where they didn’t offer any sort of Home Ec or life classes, and even arts were slim pickings.
Reaching WAAAAY back here (1990, high school), in my child growth and development class we had to care for sacks of flour.
Yep. We had sacks of flour at our school in the 1990s.
Worse. Now they get these electronic babies that scream at intervals when they need to be fed or changed, 24/7. Kids need to go to the baby and insert a little magnetic fob into a slot in its back to emulate meeting a need to stop it from crying. And it’s like a tomagochi. If you ignore it or harm it, it “dies” and needs to be reset by the health teacher. My stepbrother had to do that project back when I was still living with my father. It was awful.
If my kid ever gets one I’m going to give it a good hard shake and drop it straight on the principal’s desk the next morning.
We definitely did not.
In school, I never had to take care of anything. Not a fake doll, sack of flour. Nothing like that.
My daughter is taking an early childhood education class as a 9th grader. She got a robotic baby with sensors that told her teacher about how well it was taken care of, including feeding, changing, burping, sleeping, and dropping.
We went out to a nice restaurant at one point and she had to bring her baby. She spent the meal trying to get the baby to stop crying, feeding it, and burping it. The old ladies in the restaurant really got a kick out of it.
We had sacks of flours in my school. Used to put all 3 of them in a laundry basket and place them on top of the pig huts when we went out to care for the pigs. Honestly, it was a waste of time but an easy grade.
I remember having to take care of an egg in middle school. Oddly enough, I don’t actually remember anything about the project, except for the fact that my teacher told us we had to come up with real names for our eggs, and “no stupid names like ‘Eggy’!”
They have robot babies now! Everything that everyone in the thread has already said, BUT ALSO some of the really new ones have temperature sensors now!! If your baby overheats or freezes you can fail (on top of registering fall damage and neglect)
Took one look at that week long project in high school and said “yeah I’ll just write a paper on human development instead”
Per your question my dad took care of a sack of flour for health class in the 80s.
We took care of pumpkins when I was in middle school.
I’ve heard of that, but I think it’s rare, and I’ve never seen it. In my college, architecture majors had to carry around a brick for a while. Not sure what that was about.
This is done, yes. But I know of one who has personally. Just seems to not the a thing in when I went to school back in New York, nor now where my kids go to school in NJ.
Depends on the school, I know some people in other states have done it, but I dont know anyone in my state thats done it
My school did eggs. I used a Barbie dining table turned upside down with yarn wrapped around to make a soft “crib” for my egg.
My math teacher murdered my egg. He took my egg, set up his dry-erase markers like pins, and said “baby bowling” before rolling my egg to her death. I made him write a confession to the home ec teacher so I wouldn’t be failed.
Some kids do, some don’t. I never did.
We did both in eighth grade.
my school never did anything like this, my parents never mentioned anything like it either. my boomer grandparents have mentioned it, though
It’s not super common but also not unheard of. I never had to do this but a small group of kids in my school did. I’m assuming as part of their health class.
It would be completely dependent on the school, the district, the teachers lesson plan, etc.
In my health class they brought in a “real life teen mom” to talk about how terrible her life is. Then they showed us pictures of horribly infected genitals and told us to never have sex or we end up like that.
Some students did it in my high school, but I didn’t. Whatever class that was, was not a class I took. My kids are recently high school graduates and no one in their school did this.
Yes! Both my husband and I took care of eggs (different schools), and I knew other students who took care of sacks of flour.
Students make the most of it by dressing up the items, giving them funny names, and backstories.
We never did, but my high school didn’t have a health class until my senior year and my grade was exempted since it was a class for the freshmen. Not sure if they had to do anything like that or not.
I don’t know anyone who’s had to take care of a fake baby as a student. Also, a class with such a requirement might not be a required class for high school graduation — you do get to pick and choose some classes — and/or school curriculum is up to individual states and districts.
We had flour sack babies in 6th grade. I left mine at home and then on the bus.
In junior high they had robot babies. If it cried you had to put a key in it among other things. That was optional but if you did it you passed health immediately
If the school is not able to afford the robot babies for the same project yes.
I had a flour baby in high school, but it was for a specific class, not everyone did it.
I think that does happen but not commonly. Didn’t happen in my schooling
Yes, I did have a flour sack baby, it was part of a home economics class, idk what the actual point was but I learned nothing from it except that flour gets everywhere.
That used to be common in the 1980’s. Now they either get NO Sex Ed or they get computerized baby dolls that cry and wet and record any shaking or neglect.
We had sacks of flour. It was to teach responsibility more than to scare us.
One year during cooking class, we ran out of flour. One of my classmates had a flour baby. He sacrificed it on a cake stand like some kind of pagan ritual. We were then able to finish making cookies.
My school had kids take care of balloons lol
Only kids in certain classes, though. Most of us never had to, but ofc we saw the ones in those classes carrying their ballons around for about a week. I think maybe it was the students in AP Psych or AP Human geography?
We took care of a potato! I think they were worried about people throwing the eggs at each other.
I had to take care of an egg for a week. I actually felt awful when it was over and I had to throw it away. 😆
Who knew you could bond with an egg!
Yup, I had an egg in 5th grade. I named it Eggbert.
I never did.
For the record, the only thing I’ve ever dissected was a flower. Never a frog or a fetal pig or even a simulation of these things.
I saw this stuff on tv and wondered if it was real too.
My school district did for 8th grade health class. But both classes two years before me were really bad and caused flour messes all around the school so when my year came, they had dropped the course.
I wasn’t in the elective class – and even then it was for extra credit, not required – but there were students who carried a 5 lb. flour sack wrapped in a diaper for a week in the late 1980s. Eggs weren’t used because they spoil quickly when kept at room temperature for a week.
Can confirm my Catholic all girls school did this. We all got bags of flour to decorate and take care of. Most of us left them in our lockers over the weekend 😅🤷🏻♀️
I graduated in 2005, but yes there was a class that carried around a bag of flour as a baby for a week. Not sure if they still do it now.
My high school girlfriend had a sack of flour. This was in 90-91
I had an egg. I learned nothing other than how much more i hated school.
It used to be common, we did sacks of flour way back when I was in school. My kids never did it, I think it varies from district to district.
My kids did/will have to. But now I think it’s basically like a Tamagotchi. It was programed to do some random things, like go off in the night.
It’s definitely used as birth control.
I went to high school in the 80s in the northeast and we never did any of that.
My high school did it as part of sex-ed class, but covid happened when I was there so I personally never got to do the egg thing.
Went to high school in the early 90’s and yes, we had to care for a bag of flour for a week. It was for a mandatory class called Adult Living. Overall it actually was a good class, they taught things like budgeting, the importance of retirement saving and starting early, safe sex and family planning, etc
Yes, this is a real thing. However, it’s a school-by-school thing; not every American necessarily does it.
Eggs were common in the 1980s and 1990s, presumably because they are fragile and ‘abuse’ would be evident because the egg would be broken by thoughtless neglect. We used to paint faces on them and give them names.
Around the early 2000s, schools began to switch to sacks of flour covered in packing tape or duct tape. The idea there was that the key takeaway wasn’t that babies are especially fragile, but that they can be cumbersome. Carrying around a 5-lb sack of flour is much more annoying.
But even that was only a limited simulation, so there ARE schools today who have invested in robotic baby analogs that require frequent changes, feedings, etc., and actually record how long it takes the ‘parents’ to respond, any violent drops or other impacts. Those are pretty clever, but they’re expensive.
I never took that elective class but there were kids that had dolls. It was mid 00s so I don’t recall the tech but I think it has gotten more tech in determining how well they are cared for. It was not to scare kids into abstinence.
Yeah, we did marigold flowers in high school Family Living class many seniors took. In the class, we learned stuff like cooking, sewing, budgeting, financial stuff like banking and taxes. And we had a unit about childcare where we had to carry around flowers for a week and make sure it was cared for at all times.
Gen Z and never heard of anyone doing it in real life
In 8th grade health class, we made “pop bottle babies.” In other words, a full 2-liter, and then you could dress them up, put a Styrofoam head and Google eyes, hair, etc. on them. I don’t remember how long we carried them around, maybe a week. I do remember mine’s name was Mina.
I was homeschooled in high school and didn’t do this, but as the oldest of six, I knew how to keep an infant alive by that point
Yes it true! Junior year I had to carry an egg around for a week!
Certainly not required, but there was some elective class in high school where they did it. I wasn’t in the class, but noticed a week where people were doing it.
I saw this on Saved by the Bell, but did not experience it in real life.
Never saw it in real life. Lots of times of TV or movies, though.
One of my daughters took an elective class in high school that included taking care of a doll with sensors. Much easier than an actual baby.
In middle school home economics we had to draw sticks to see if we would take care of a boy, girl, twins, etc. I got two twin boys and then we blew the egg yolk out of the eggs. The teacher signed the bottom of the eggs. We decorated the eggs and carried them around in baskets that we also decorated. Ricky and Bobby survived the week even though many stupid boys tried to kill them!
I never had to do anything like that.
Graduated HS in ‘01 and had home economics and had the baby with the sensor. It sucked, but that is the point of the assignment. It was embarrassing having to carry the baby in a car seat to all my classes and then it would start crying in class and you had this key thing you had to stick in the back that was supposed to represent the bottle. It all sucked. Worked well since at 42 I’m childfree by choice.
2005 graduate here so, I’m old. My school had robotic baby dolls that should cry for various reasons. That was a stressful week. 😅 I’m still child free.
Never did this and never knew anyone who did this.
My school didn’t do any of that at all. I never carried around anything.
We did the eggs in 6th grade, back in 1994.
That said, the teacher wasn’t planning on doing it at all, thinking it was corny and out of date even then.
But we insisted.
It was great fun. We had an egg babysitting service for when you wanted to run off without breaking your egg. We also smashed them on the floor when we wantes to disrupt other classes.
I can’t say we learned anything about child care, but we have fond memories.
I feel like it was more common in the 70s and 80s. My mom and my aunts did it but by the time I was in HS (early 00s) they didnt do it any more. Probably because they were only making women do it, and that was seen as wrong even close to 30 years ago.
It was a thing. I don’t believe it’s too common now.
My school for child psych portion of my psychology class made us carry a doll or bear of some sort for a month and we couldn’t be seen without it from our teacher and if we did come to school without it points would be taken off of our final grade. my sister when she was in high school was assigned to take an actual baby shopping like the group of students were all assigned a living breathing baby and the teacher followed them around the stores while they shopped for the baby. Had to change them and feed them too. It’s pretty funny honestly
I remember being paired up in a science class and having to take care of an egg for week with my lab partner. I think my sister came home with a baby doll we all had to help her with for week. Although my sister just did stuff like all time anyway, not sure if it was for school or not. She had school friends that were teen parents she’d babysit for too. That was a real teen pregnancy baby she brought over to take care of for awhile. Obviously that class lesson didn’t work for some students.
It was optional at my school for extra credit and it was stuffed animal. Kids at my school were encouraged to snitch on bad parents who left their babies unattended.
Never did it. Home Ec was basically phased out by the time I was in school though. I graduated high school in 2001.
As is the answer to almost every single question that gets asked related to education: some of them do.
There is NO universal curriculum for public schools in the US. Is this a common-ish practice in a lot of schools? Probably. But it is not a blanket thing that everyone does.
I never did. It just wasn’t a thing we did in my school.
I’ve never seen it. Not all schools even offer sex ed and many that do are very minimal. Another class this could happen in is home ec, but that’s an even more rare class particularly in recent years and would be optional. I took home ec in middle school and had some sex ed segments and we never did anything like this. I always thought the same seeing it in media all the time and wondered who actually did it.
But it.
It wasn’t a thing were I went to school, at the very least. Tbf, the time/place I went to school also didn’t have home economics, so that was probably a factor in that.
We had balloons wrapped in a blanket, this was in the 90s.
I’ve only ever seen it in movies or TV shows. I never had to do it or knew anybody who did.
My old high school gave out robot babies, but only for Child Development. (Which was an elective.) Furthermore, it was only for the weekend, and only for extra credit, since the school only had one. (The teacher named him Raoul.)
My son brought home a peep this year. He almost immediately lost it. He’s 9.
I had an electronic baby in high school as part of health class. Some classes wouldn’t allow the baby so you had to find a babysitter who was in a different class that would allow the baby. They had keys that you put in their back when they started crying to fulfill their needs (feed, change, snuggle) and one night mine would not stop crying despite trying keys multiple times. Quite like a real baby tbh.
We didn’t do this in my school. We didn’t have a home ec class, we just had cooking. And we weren’t made to do this in health class either.
My health class didn’t do it, but my Gf’s did. She had a sack of flour baby she had to carry around for a week.
She was already on birth control so it didn’t really matter.
Egg, in the 1980s
Doubt anyone does this today with the cost of eggs
I had bags of flour in middle school. I’m 23, so it’s definitely not a totally dead convention.
We never did (I went to middle school and high school in the 90s and very early 2000s)
We never did. It’s more about places that had high teen pregnancy and were more religious. It was a substitution for effective sex education, to scare teens away from the sex.
We did that for sex education class in 6th grade. Still had tons of teen pregnancies though. I remember my egg fondly, her name was Carmela and we were on Monopoly money welfare because the teacher only gave me $3 because I gave Carmela red hair and purple eyes 🤣
Edit to add: an 8th grader got a 7th grader pregnant at my middle school and the girl’s mom made her keep the baby(they were both 12). Really really sad. We would always joke about how the boy, who was in my year, had loved his egg so much he wanted to turn it into a real baby, but as an adult, remembering it is very sad.
Yeah I did the egg and the flour at different times.
Around 2006-2008 after I was out of school myself I worked in childcare at an after school program. The kids were taking care of a bag of sugar.
So of course one kid stabbed the bag of sugar with a pen and poured the sugar into his mouth.
I did, it was just a week long project in an elective class, so not everyone had to. But my kids haven’t had that project even though they took the same elective in middle school. It’s probably different from state to state though, and even school district to school district. I live in one of the worst states for per capita school funding, and because of how our tax system works, the issue gets worse and worse each year. So lots of classes and programs have been cut. In better funded states it might still be a thing.
We did flourish sacks, and had to decorate them to look like babies. Mine had red yarn for hair. 😄
We do not have American pupils.
Never have known any students who were given anything breakable or to care for other than a class room pet over holiday break. It was a trend some years ago to give students a fake baby to care for, mostly to scare them with the awareness of the heavy constant responsibility into not getting pregnant.
It has been a thing for awhile. But they are more and more using simulated babies. Dolls that cry, wet, and have sensors to see if they’ve been mistreated.
Our school in the 80s had eggs in 7th grade.
I had hoped to be able to do this in Home Ec but we didn’t get to, so I had a baby at 18 instead. Lol.
I got a sack of flour in 8th grade to care for. We used them to clog the toilets.
Yup. In high school I had a sack of flour with some rules. Had to protect them from fellow schoolmates…
A few (unlucky) kids got an actual baby doll. Those were too much lol
Yes. I had to carry a raw egg around for a week in eighth grade and keep a journal of all the places/activities I took it to. It rolled off my bed on day two and I used super glue to seal the crack, which I figured was fair since human wounds are often closed that way.