nancylebov | Science fiction anticipates the real world

mama_hogswatch described Baby Think It Over, a course which requires 14 year olds to take care of a baby simulator, which is apparently set to a realistic level of difficulty, but which offers none of the rewards of an actual baby. The poster expresses concern that this might discourage parenthood too much.

As it happens, there was a science fiction story called "The Education of Tigress McCardle" by Kornbluth from 1957. Since he was a satirist, the difficulties programmed into the robot baby were extreme (iirc, it was atomic-powered, but had a gasoline motor which keep breaking down and had to be repaired, in addition to requiring routine child care and being set up to start wailing when the potential parents tried to start sex-- the robot baby had remote human operators).

In any case, the reason potential parents had to take care of the robot baby for a week was a Communist Chinese plot! Decades later, the teeming hordes conquer a depopulated and aging US.

I'm going to add China's one-child policy as another reason why we seem to be living in fairly low-probability science fiction..