How brave and smart is this girl?

It's not supposed to make you feel sympathetic to anyone. It's an experiment. I would imagine that most girls who get pregnant while still at school are too busy coping with everything to carefully note the way that everyone around them reacts, write it all down, try to be objective about it (more possible than if you are actually pregnant). I think it's very interesting and would quite like to see what she found. It may be that people's reactions to her were not as bad as you might expect, she may have experienced out and out discrimination in unexpected ways, who knows. It's interesting, to me.

Of course people's attitude would change. It is a pretty silly thing for a teenager (both the boy and the girl) to do whilst they were still in school.

Not sure what that proves beyond the bleeding obvious and misleading people in the process. It does not make me sympathetic to teenager parents one jolt.

I'm pretty impressed.

The point was to record how people's approach towards her changed when they thought she was pregnant. It must have been fascinating, and probably sometimes pretty upsetting.

So what was the point of her experiment?

Don't see that is was brave at all. As a parent of a teenage ds, this would have had a huge impact on me and dh.

I really don't see the point of this experiment. I thought the most telling part of the whole article was the detailed description of her "form-fitting prom dress" at the end.

I don't really see how this gave anyone a big shake up, other than giving them a huge surprise at having been deceived.

If someone that I was close to lied to me about being pregnant, for the sake of a school project, I would feel hugely hurt and betrayed. People will have worried about her, thought about her future and how they could help her, looked forward to seeing the baby - only to find it was a lie. This seems wrong to me on so many levels.

Agree with melpomene

Gah! I loathe anything set up to deliberately mislead people.

I think a day walking around, appearing to be pregnant and seeing the reaction from other people would have been enough.
I bet people were buying things for the baby.

I think the stunt was wrong too. And of course she wasn't really "experiencing what it's like to be pregnant" because she knew that her future life wouldn't be restricted by a baby, she wasn't experiencing morning sickness or having to worry about whether the baby was growing healthily, she didn't have to worry about getting through labour etc. It's not as bad as 'blacking up' in order to experience racism, but it's the same sort of principle.

Surely it would have been more informative to interview and study real teenage mums.

Although I agree it might have been a more interesting experiment if comments to/about her bf had been recorded. And investigated the difference of how society treat teenage mothers compared to teenage fathers

I kind of agree that it was wrong. If she was doing a social experiment on how people deal with terminal illness and pretended to have cancer for example, I doubt she would have been congratulated.

dittany and bodyofeeyore are spot on.

If my son's girlfriend was pregnant at 16 I would of course be disappointed but I would also feel very emotionally invested in that pregnancy and my first grandchild's arrival. If it was my younger sister I would feel the same. "When you're running a social experiment, you're dealing with human emotions. The human person in me felt I had been lied to." yeah imagine that from a family member. I think I'd have real trouble forgiving my sons girlfriend if she used me like this.
I would actually be more interested in the comments the young would be father received. That's not something that's often talked about. And here it doesn't get a mention either.

I think she was wrong to mislead so many people.

the article mentioned that the bfs parents thought it was going to be a boy - which means they had thought about a real baby and their lives in connection to that child.

i do agree on this point, that there may be a grieving process, in fact - if it were my sons girlfriend - i can see how invested i would be - even if i were disappointed

It would have been interesting if the boyfriend had recorded the comments and attitudes of others to him as the father of the baby, and then compared the two sides.

amazing tenacity. eyebrow raising. thought provoking and very brave.

It wasn't mentioned in the article, where it would have been relevant, and so I don't see a reason to presume the worst.