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First off – I love this show.
Watching teenagers cope with kids touches the black, dark part of my heart that laughs when people trip. Ok, I don’t really laugh when people trip unless they’re wearing four-inch Manolos or Christian Laboutin shoes (the $400 shoes with the red soles so everyone knows they cost an arm and a leg.) So I may be a bad person, but I’m a normal bad person not the “I laugh at old people” bad person. Shades of gray, my friends, shades of gray...
Back to the show. The Baby Borrowers (and if you haven’t seen it you need to – immediately) takes five teen couples and gives them other people’s children. Three days with infants, then toddlers, then pre-teens, then teenagers, then elderly folks.
While they take care of them there are little twists – someone has to go to work and leave the other home alone with the kid(s) all day. Or…one couple has to have a sleepover with all the neighborhood kids while the other couples get greeted by a friend of only one of the couple. You know, driving the potential wedge in the relationship here, there, and everywhere.
My problem is that this show DOES NOT battle teen pregnancy. It is not “Birth Control” as the commercials claim. Three days is not going to give you a feel for how life-changing a baby is. These couples (the very fact they’re all couples should be a red flag, no?) are placed into lovely homes on a cul-de-sac. I understand the cul-de-sac is for taping purposes – it is a TV show after all – but how many of the couples would be living in a house that size? Multiple bathrooms, beautiful countertops…please. Where is the couple that gets to deal with a baby in a trailer with no air conditioning? Where is the couple that runs out of money and has to shop with food stamps? Where is real teen pregnancy? That’s birth control. Not this put them in $200k homes with lovely furniture and let them laugh if a toddler pees all over the couch because they didn’t pay for it.
At the same time, being surrounded by cameras has to add a level of pressure on these kids I cannot imagine. When Alicia doesn’t feed the baby because he won’t stop crying and the mom comes down on her like a ton of bricks because she fed the baby once that day. Now if the baby was sick or frail or in some other way not perfectly healthy when the day started, it is not a crime nor is it neglect for the kid not to eat enough for one day because he wouldn't stop crying. It certainly didn't make the mother look good to have her going off on the teen.
Because the real issue at the bottom of The Baby Borrowers is this: If it isn't your kid, you will NOT be able to figure out in three days how to take care of it. Period. The deck is loaded and these teens are smart enough to know that it would be different if it were their own kid. Many kids across America are smart enough to know that too.
Once you realize the experiment is rigged and it would be different if it were your baby from the day it came out and you would learn how to take care of it because every baby is different...it is no longer helping teens not get pregnant. It is proving to them that the only way to raise a child is to have one instead of adoption. It shows how damn-near impossible it is to take care of a child that isn't yours. It is going into the homes of teens who will now believe adoption is a one-way ticket to "never good enough" in the parenting department.
And I don't think that's okay.
If you do have a teen and they're baby-crazy, consider visiting The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy website and get some tips and tricks to talk to your teen. Because I am pretty sure talking is the first step toward making sure your child is established enough to hire a babysitter before she decides to have a baby.
