What is Baby Borrowers?It's a series that follows five teenage couples as they try out parenting first hand. In the first episode you see the couples moving into their own home and the girls trying out empathy bellies. In episodes two and three, they're given babies to look after, in four it's toddlers, five it's pre-teens, six is young teens and then, finally, it’s old people. The first series was straightforward, but the second series is based around them being on holiday. I like to think of Baby Borrowers as being the opposite of the film Groundhog Day, where every day is the same. In Baby Borrowers, life is on fast forward. You see the teens go on a real emotional journey. When I was a teenager I thought I knew it all and wanted everything now. The message we’re trying to give is: 'You've got lots of time, enjoy it while you can and don’t be in too much of a rush. Don't grow up too fast.' Why teenagers?To start with we didn’t even think to do the show with teens. Originally, we thought it would be fun to give couples a baby, toddler, pre-teen and so on to give them a taster of what it would be like, and to help them decide if they were ready for kids. But then, because the teenage pregnancy rate in Britain is so high, we came up with the idea of a sort of parenting-on-fast-forward social experiment for teenagers. We wanted to show them how hard and important parenting is, and that it's not a decision to be taken lightly. We wanted to encourage them to think seriously about whether they were ready to be parents, and whether they were with the right partner, too. I joke that the divorce rate would be halved in this country if everyone did Baby Borrowers first. There was criticism of the parents who were prepared to 'lend' their baby to the teens. How do you deal with that?We worked very closely with the parents to make sure the experience was safe and healthy for the children. We had a psychologist or psychotherapist there, we had cameras in every room, plus nannies who were ready to step in at any point. The babies' parents were able to watch on CCTV - they knew they could go in at any point and, of course, they could visit their kids off camera. The parents were a huge part of the whole process. Yes, there has been criticism, but it's by people who are unaware of all the safety procedures we had in place, all the precautions we took and how involved the parents were. There have been concerns recently about babies and toddlers being used in reality TV, but it can be a really enjoyable experience for them if the producers are doing their job properly. We had far more professional care available than, say, in a nursery, where there might be ten to 15 kids to one teacher. Some of the criticism was that Baby Borrowers might be giving off the message that it's OK to give your baby to a stranger. This wasn't the case at all. What the programme is really saying is: 'Let's do something about teenage pregnancy.' The show is a kind of mental contraception – it's meant to make you stop and think before you rush in to being a parent. Why did the parents get involved?At first we didn’t even know if it would be possible to find people willing to allow their children to take part. Our motivation was really important to them - they weren't going to allow their babies to be used if our motives weren't good. It's important to me that I make programmes which matter. Of course they need to entertain and appeal, but I’m not interested if the programme isn’t educational. I want people to learn. And the parents understood that. What stands out for you in the current series?Nathan went on an emotional journey. He was terrified of caring for a baby at the beginning, thanks to issues in his own childhood, but he overcame this. At the end, when he’s standing on the beach, saying "sometimes you have a moment that tastes so good", it's incredible to watch. It was fantastic to see Jo and Hannah doing so well at being parents. It shows it’s not predictable at all. You think all the couples are going to be hopeless, but they were very good. Lauren struggled a lot, but it was lovely to watch how Sam held her together. They were very good together. Seeing Zen’s thoughtfulness and generosity was lovely, too. She bonded with the old woman who stayed with her. Meanwhile, the teenagers organised a birthday party for a 99-year-old woman who was in the programme. The old lady ended up saying she used to be frightened of teenagers but she wasn’t any more. There were so many funny and moving moments, but, in the end, what’s really great is seeing the important emotional journeys they all go through.
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