Baby Borrowers
Anyone else watching this “reality” show? I’m oddly fascinated by it.
The premise is that the show takes some older teens who are in relationships and takes them through the insanity that is parenting in a sort of telescoped fashion.
They arrived at their “home,” and got settled in a little. Then they got the pregnancy belly, which the girl was supposed to wear until the baby arrived. A couple of days of that — and it looked pretty realistic, and heavy — and a group of parents delivered their infants for a two-day stay with the new “parents.” A couple of days with the infants, and then the toddlers arrived. Next week is the pre-teens. Presumably the following week will have them spending a couple of days with teenagers.
A dose of reality is injected when the “borrowers” have to choose who’s going to go to work and who’s going to stay with the kids all day. But it’s muted by the fact that they can change their minds. In real life, if you have a situation where Daddy is the go-to-work parent and Mommy stays home, you can’t just up and change your mind overnight. Or the next morning when you feel like it’s “too early” to have to get up after being up all night with an inconsolably crying infant.
The parents of the “loaner kids” are in a house across the street and can monitor their child’s care and interactions with the “borrowers” at all times. And there is a trained nanny on duty to ensure that the kids are not endangered or neglected. This has led to some hurt feelings and angry scenes when a parent or nanny had to step in and make it clear that something wasn’t acceptable.
It amazes me how self-centered and clueless these “borrowers” are. But then, they are inexperienced kids. And kids in this upcoming generation simply don’t handle correction well, no matter how gently delivered and no matter how carefully phrased. Correct them, and they take it as a personal affront, and get angry.
One girl completely refused to interact with her infant after the mother told her that it was not acceptable that her eight-month-old had not had any solid food all day. And a boy got upset when the nanny told him that it was not acceptable that his girlfriend left the house while he was in the shower, leaving “their” twin 3-year-olds unsupervised for more than 15 minutes. (He didn’t know that the girl had left, and was more angry with her than with the nanny.)
Still, it’s pretty interesting to see the interactions of these kids with the babies they are caring for. It will be interesting to see how it all turns out in the end. But from observing their struggles with parenthood in a couple-based situation, I can tell you one thing: Not one of them would survive as a single parent.