The Baby Borrowers: Birth Control or Child Abuse?
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The Baby Borrowers premiered on NBC on Wednesday night. The premise of the show is to give teenage couples a real baby to look after, so they can find out exactly what it’s like being parents.
The supposed aim is that teenagers will watch the show, and realize that being a mom or dad is actually much, much harder than they think. This show is especially timely after the recent furore over the 17 pregnant teens in Massachusetts who had an alleged pact to become pregnant and raise their babies together.
The show is modeled after a British show of the same name, and it provoked controversy in Britain over the safety and well being of the babies and children involved. Critics likened The Baby Borrowers to “kidnapping” babies and expressed concern that permanent psychological damage would be done.
NBC say that while the show was filmed, nannies and paramedics were on the set 24 hours a day, the teenagers and babies lived in childproofed houses, and the babies’ parents were present and allowed to intervene for any reason. The teens will look after babies for 3 days.
I lived in Los Angeles when The Baby Borrowers was being cast, and the producers approached a Mom’s group I was a member of, looking for babies to be on the show. Would you volunteer your baby for a show like this?
The teenage girls wore fake pregnant bellies in the first show, and the teenage couple get their babies next week. Then after that, they will try looking after toddlers, teenagers and seniors.
Will you be watching this show? Do you think it will deter teenagers from becoming pregnant? Do you think any potential damage to the babies and children (and seniors!) used outweighs the social good? Or do you think the whole idea is horrendous?
And would you volunteer your child for a show like this? My mom friends, and me - we all said “no”. Actually, it was more like NO NO NO NO! What would you have done?
lauren says...
I would NEVER allow my baby to be a part of this stupidity.
Kimberly says...
Oh my gosh. My husband and I were just talking about this last night. Whoever “donated” their babies for this show…I just can’t imagine what they must have been thinking. No, no, no, no. I don’t even like my son to be handled by his own grandparents without me watching! (Who knows what old-fashioned idea they might try, like feeding my 9 week old solid foods!)
I also think that if the situation NBC describes is so sterilized and controlled, then their experiment isn’t really effective anyway, so this whole thing is just one gorey, disgusting spectacle. I won’t be watching. Ick.
Melissa H says...
There is no way in the world that I would donate my child for this show. NO NO NO NO is right. My child is 8 months old now and no longer at that really fragile stage but there is still no way. Never never.
I am kind of torn as to whether it is a good idea. It could easily stop teens from getting pregnant. (the first couple of months with a newborn has made me wonder if I will ever do it again and I am…. ahem older than a teen) But I am really not sure that it is healthy for the infant. I mean I am sure that I have made plenty of mistakes as a first time mommy…but I made them and 3 days seperated (for the most part) from Mommy and Daddy kind of gives me the creeps. The longest that I have been away is like 1 1/2 hours and I have had issues with that =)
Carol says...
It is unthinkable that any parent would willingly subject his or her child to potential harm, and yet that is exactly what the misguided participants in “The Baby Borrowers” have done. These individuals are not trusting their children to licensed, experienced childcare workers; they are handing them over to inexperienced teenagers, who from the looks of things have never taken so much as a babysitting course. Yes, there are circumstances where parents must rely on others to care for their children. I would like to think that these same parents would be responsible enough to choose a reputable daycare or childcare provider. As a mother of two small children, I can only imagine how heart-wrenching it must have been for those parents to sit and watch their children in obvious distress. Perhaps they were comforted by the notion that their participation in this “social experiment” would make a difference. After all, that is the whole point of “The Baby Borrowers” is it not? The show purports to discourage teen pregnancy by enlightening young people on the realities of parenthood. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but, if the comments posted on the NBC website and other blogs are any indication, the teenagers watching the show are not being dissuaded by what they see. They are, in fact, rooting for their favorite couples. One writes, “i love you alicea and cory yall make a really good parents!!!!:)” How the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unwanted Pregnancies, which is designed to educate teenagers on the pitfalls of unplanned pregnancy, could have been so short-sighted is beyond belief. So much for the slogan, “It’s not TV. It’s birth control!” If one is so naive as to believe that the executives at NBC were interested in anything more than ratings, then it is time for a reality check.
Tracy says...
The more that I hear about this show and what really goes on behind the scenes (first, the so-called “teens” are actually young adults who should be responsible for their own lives anyway, so the whole idea of it being “birth control” is a joke, then the reality that it is supposedly in such a staged environment makes it more unbelievable), the more my wife and I would never in a million years would want our son (who is a year old) to be part of such a farce!
For NBC to say that “It’s not TV. It’s birth control” is a big lie. Face it, a network would put anything on television if it attracts viewers and increase their ratings. The Peacock Network has just stooped to a new low.
Laquisha says...
I would volunteer my child to be on this show, and then when the teen couples abuse them I would burst out into hysterics.
Its actually pretty funny if you think abou it.
I incourage my child to be on this show, and when they go on and the teens are being too nice I will intervine and say that they need to rough it up a bit.