The Baby Borrowers return to BBC Three this week but, this time, they’re off on holiday.

For most teenagers holidays are fun, but, for The Baby Borrowers, their holiday to Newquay, Cornwall, will be far from easy and they won’t be lazing around topping up their tans. The five teenage couples – all craving independence – will live alone and act as teenage parents.

In just four weeks, they will be fast-tracked through adult life – from pregnancy to parenting babies, toddlers, pre-teens and teens, to caring for the elderly.
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The BBC’s newest reality Tv show, The Baby Borrowers has been heavily criticised by child protection charity Kidscape as taking reality TV a step too far.

The eight part series puts teenagers on the spot by allowing them to take full responsibility for the welfare of a child. It is reported that one child was left without food for a full day, while another had to be removed from its teenage carers.

Dr Michele Elliot, founder and director of Kidscape, said: “It’s sick to think that the BBC would commission such a show. Is this really what they should be spending licence payers’ money on?

“I’m also appalled that the parents let their children be used in this way. Someone’s got to make a stand and say this is a reality show too far.”

A BBC spokesman responded to the criticism, saying: “The safety of children is of paramount importance. Hence, extraordinary steps were taken, including psychological screening, criminal record checks, the use of 24/7 CCTV cameras and employing only trained childcare professionals.”

The Baby Borrowers

With the UK’s teenage pregnancy rate currently the highest in Europe, BBC Three launches its Coming Of Age Season with The Baby Borrowers, an ambitious social experiment filmed over the course of a month that takes teenage couples on a rollercoaster ride of adult responsibility and allows them to discover what it’s really like to be a parent.

Dynamic and compelling, the series, stripped over two weeks, gives five teenage couples a taste of adult life on fast-forward.

Aged between 16 and 19, the teens are thrown in at the deep end: given real houses and real responsibilities, the most important of which is to look after children from a range of age groups, from babies to teenagers.

Each young couple is set a series of tasks to perform to find out if they are ready for all that adult life brings – juggling everything from parenting and work to the household budget and their relationship.

Through tears and tantrums, the teen couples mimic the cliches of adult life. Viewers see whether they can cope with real babies and toddlers, whether they decide to stay together at the end of it all, and what they say to their own parents when they get home after the most memorable month of their lives so far.

The baby borrowers will air each night next week on BBC Three at 10.30pm