New-Age Sex Ed: Teens Borrow Real Kids

Sept. 6, 2007 — -- A new NBC reality show "The Baby Borrowers," which gives young couples the opportunity to experience parenthood firsthand by supplying them with real babies, is raising questions about whether reality television has gone too far.

The show, a spin-off of a similar program that aired in the United Kingdom earlier this year, will film five young couples, all 18 years or older, in real homes with real children, in hopes of giving them a better idea of what parenting is like.

And, in order to simulate the different challenges of parenthood, the children "borrowed" by the young couples will be swapped out every few days with older kids, according to the show's Web site. By the end of the season, each couple will have cared for an infant, a toddler, a preteen, a teenager and even an elderly person.

With news about "Borrowers" emerging on the coattails of the controversy surrounding CBS' "Kid Nation," a reality show that documents 40 unsupervised kids in New Mexico as they try to form a functioning society, child-rearing professionals told ABC News they are wary of parents who might volunteer their children for this type of program. The program could cause emotional damage to the children who appear on the show, they said.

Ethical Issues

"It's pretty scary. Who are the parents who are going to give up their kids?" said Geoffry White, a licensed psychologist. "There better be very careful screening and profiling of the parents and kids so these infants and children don't get traumatized. Serious emotional damage can happen very quickly."

NBC and the executive producer of the show, Richard McKerrow, declined to comment directly to ABCNEWS.com.

But in a recent interview with TV Week, McKerrow said that none of the participants were paid for their roles on the program and that the set was "an extremely safe environment" and "safer than [day care]."

In addition to the film crews that follow the couples around the clock, a nanny also monitors the couples in case anything goes wrong, according to TV Week.

But psychologists remain cautious about the long-term effects on children who are placed in the care of strangers, especially those looking to make a name for themselves in the reality TV market.

"These are [young couples] who have never had kids," said White, who has been a consultant on a handful of reality shows. "We don't want young children put in the hands of inexperienced celebrity-oriented kids."

So who are these parents who handed over their children to the control of television producers and young lovebirds?

According to the show's producer, people were more than willing to offer their children to the show.

"We immediately found lots of parents, teachers and psychologists who were willing to help," McKerrow told TV Week. "We worked with them to design the safety and health measures for the show."

Parents were allowed to pull their child from the program at any time if they felt the situation was too dangerous, he said.

Much like the controversy surrounding the reality show "Kid Nation," critics have also questioned the ethics of a show that employs young children for long hours at odd times of the day.

After the uproar surrounding "Kid Nation," New Mexico child labor laws were amended, placing tighter restrictions on the number of hours a child can work and when. Similarly, in Idaho, where the new NBC show was filmed, the lax child labor laws may also be getting a face-lift.

Since taping of "The Baby Borrowers" ended, a committee has recommended revising the state's child labor laws, Craig Soelberg, a program supervisor at the wage and hour division of the Idaho Department of Labor, told ABCNEWS.com.

The recommendations for stricter laws had nothing to do with the reality show, Soelberg said, and it was merely time for the laws to be updated.

Can Reality Shows Be Educational?

While the primary concern for many is the well-being of the children being loaned out to the program, experts say that if done right, "Borrowers" could actually have some educational value.

"I bet the kids who are involved in this learn a lot about how hard it is to take care of children and how it is a 24/7 responsibility," said Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, a professor of child development at Columbia University who works closely with single teenage mothers. "They'll get an idea of the challenges at each age and the show will hopefully give young couples the idea that the baby doesn't stay a baby forever and does grow up."

While many high school health classes may employ the egg method — where students are responsible for the well-being of a fragile egg for a week — Brooks-Gunn said that she thinks the premise of the reality show, which takes the classic method a step further, could very well be effective in deterring teen pregnancy. However, she still says she wouldn't lend her own child to the experiment.

"What's fantastic about the series is the teen couples go on these emotional journeys where they start out being quite arrogant and they find out just how hard parenting is," McKerrow told TV Week. "Hopefully by the end of the show they're a bit more informed about when they want to have babies — and whom they want to have babies with."

John Gourlie, a professor of communications at Quinnipiac University and pop culture expert, told ABCNEWS.com that the unique nature of the show could lend itself well to skeptical teenagers who think they already know everything about sex.

"For the teenagers, adults are discredited and are 'too old' and 'don't understand' [what they're going through]," said Gourlie. "If the program is done in a way where other teenagers would recognize it as honest and true, I could see it speaking to them in a kind of authority. It could strike home and they might say 'I never want to do that.'"

While an air date has yet to be set, the show will air sometime midseason, according to Wendy Luckenbill, the vice president of alternative series and special programming at NBC. So far, six episodes have been taped.