Do Robot Babies Poo Electric Sheep?

How interesting is this? Apparently Japan has one of the fastest aging populations (I assume that means more people growing older each year and not people growing older at an accelerated rate) and also one of the lowest birth rates in the world. And this robot baby is designed to be similar enough to a real baby to jump start women’s biological clocks to try and offset that population crisis.

Nice try, Japan. But first of all, look at it. It looks like it has a glandular problem. Look at that head! Like a character from Hey Arnold! If I were a prospective parent and I saw a baby with a head that size, I think my biological clock would stop. My birth canal would literally seize up at the sight of that planet sized head.

Secondly, this baby cries. It gets a runny nose. You ever see a runny-nosed crying baby? Not effective advertising for procreation. The only thing that would make this worse is if it woke you up at night with a poopy diaper. (It doesn’t get poopy diapers, right?) I actually think this would be a more effective birth control demonstration for middle and high schoolers.

But lastly, if I—the would-be parent—get myself a robot baby, one that doesn’t eat or poo or have to wear the latest trendy clothes or be shunned by the other babies, one that requires virtually no responsibility or commitment from me, one that supposedly does all the stuff a real baby does… Will that really prompt me to have a child? Or are my needs already met?


That’s assuming, of course, we’re not talking about my kids, R & M. (Kids, come on! You’ve been warned not to read Mommy’s blog!)