mother V. #3
10代での妊娠を減らすことを目的に行われた「赤ちゃんロボット」の実験でしたが、逆効果となってしまったようです。
Robot Babies Not Effective Birth Control, Study Finds
CANBERRA, Australia—A weekend spent mothering a robot baby to mirror the "real experience" of parenting is meant to discourage teenage girls from getting pregnant. But so-called Baby Think it Over dolls don't cut teen pregnancy rates and in fact increase the risk, Australian research has found.
In a study published in The Lancet medical journal Friday, researchers found teenage girls who used the lifelike computerized dolls as part of a pregnancy-prevention program were more likely to become pregnant compared with girls receiving a less high-tech sex education.
"The program was supposed to put students off and then they would take extra steps not to get pregnant," said study author Sally Brinkman, of the Telethon Kids Institute in Western Australia. "Unfortunately, and surprisingly for us, the intervention we can say definitely didn't work and it actually seemed to increase the pregnancy rates. It just didn't really work in putting the students off."
今回取り上げるのはmotherです。
ここではLDOCEでも“to look after and protect someone as if you were their mother, especially by being too kind and doing everything for them”と定義されているように、「世話をする」の意味で使われているようですが、いつもは名詞の「母」としての認識が強かったので気になりました。
『ジーニアス英和辞典』（第五版、大修館書店）によると、motherの動詞は他にも「産む、母親になる、甘やかす、過保護に扱う」となることがわかりました。
一方で対義語のfatherは「父になる」の他に「（考え、方法などを）生み出す」、「…とみなす」などがあり、同じ「親」を表す単語でも動詞となるとそれぞれ異なった意味をもつようです。
(flyingbird)
