"What I Like to Do Is Put the 'Real' Back in Reality TV": An Interview with the Creator of ‘The Baby Borrowers’

Most American audiences don't know the name Richard McKerrow – not as well as they know the names Mark Burnett and Nigel Lythgoe, at any rate. However, McKerrow is an accomplished creator of reality TV in his own right, and is the man responsible for bringing The Baby Borrowers – in which teenager couples are given a turn at raising other people's babies, toddlers, and teens over the course of a few weeks – to the small screen in both the U.S. and the U.K.

McKerrow began his career as a print journalist before moving into documentary films, a genre he clearly still loves – he likes to call Baby Borrowers a form of "documentary reality therapy." Among his issue-oriented films are titles such as Miss Popular's Crack City, Bollywood Star, Tainted Love, and Sex Bomb – the latter two are looks at sexual dangers facing teenagers. He then went into the business of creating reality-oriented TV programming in Britain with his company Love Productions – one of his hits being The Baby Borrowers.

The show caused controversy across the pond just as it has in America, with parents' groups and organizations such as the American Psychiatric Association saying the idea of taking child away from the real parents and giving them to inexperienced caregivers is potentially harmful. Nevertheless, the show has also been seen as a valuable teaching tool – special editions of the U.K. version have since been distributed throughout British schools to illustrate to young people the responsibilities and pitfalls of teenage parenting and relationships. A second series of the British edition, The Baby Borrowers on Holiday, is currently in production.

McKerrow recently talked to RealityNewsOnline about his vision for The Baby Borrowers, his reaction to its critics – who he says should be applauding the show because it's about improving a troubling social situation and not just a competition for prize money – and his own experience with kids. McKerrow is frank, clever, engaging, and gives one the impression that he's more interested in genuinely helping young people than simply making good TV (though he does that too).

RealityNewsOnline: Tell me about how the idea for The Baby Borrowers came about. Why did you want to make this show?

Richard McKerrow: The original notion was the idea of some people choosing to become parents or not, and when to do so. We had an idea to give people the opportunity to make parenting a fast-forward experience.

Because we make reality shows around a social purpose, [we knew] the teen pregnancy rate [in Britain] was very high, seven times higher than the rest of Europe, and I know U.S. teen pregnancy rates were very high as well. There were similarities between high teen pregnancy rates and divorce rates as well, so we wanted to do something, a populist way of addressing teen pregnancy.

The idea was a fantastic conceit: An opportunity to experience adult life on fast forward. Essentially, The Baby Borrowers aims to show that being a parent is a very challenging thing to do and shouldn't be taken for granted. Hopefully what happens when you watch it is that you think about becoming a parent first and who you become a parent with.

RNO: Are you happy with the way the show has made the transition to American television? Has that been a success?

Richard: It's been incredibly successful. It's been difficult and challenging because the TV culture is different. We got a show runner [Tom Shelly] who had done episodes of Survivor to help [make that transition]. It's the best of British and the best of American creativity. It has a lot of American production values – high-end production, digital cameras – but real British values too, so it's translated very well.

British teens and American teens have a lot in common. The saying is that we're two countries separated by a common language … American parents are much more involved than British parents, as you saw. America is a much more open society in terms of people showing emotions and participating. British parents are more reserved. But the truth is, we're all the same. Babies exhaust you at night the same; the stresses are the same for those who watch kids on both sides of the Atlantic.

RNO: You mentioned teen pregnancy rates. How terrific a coincidence was it that the show aired in America around the same time of teen pregnancy stories in the news, like Jamie Lynn Spears' birth and the reported pregnancy pact among girls at an American high school? Did that help the show?

Richard: Teen pregnancy is a complicated phenomenon. It's easy for people to say it's a terrible thing. It isn't a terrible thing in every case. Some young people are incredibly mature and are ready to provide a loving home for their children, but the total research shows that babies born to teenage moms tend to be emotionally and psychologically less healthy.

That Jamie Lynn Spears is pregnant isn't especially a bad thing, but if it encourages lots of teens to have a baby, it is a bad thing. The pregnancy pact story … if the pact was made prior to getting pregnant, my judgment would be that it couldn't be a good thing. It's pure coincidence that it happened [around the same time as the TV show debuted], but if the facts create a national debate, I think that's a good thing.

RNO: Do you have any experience raising children of your own?

Richard: I've got a four-year-old and a baby that was born just four weeks ago. [The show] is easy for anybody to relate to. When you see the series play out, the teen couples are facing the same pressures, the same challenges you did. Sometimes you felt you were looking in a human mirror watching it, especially the toddler stage, which I'm at. With the teens, it felt like looking at the future.