TV parenting programmes

I am writing to complain about the programme Boys and Girls alone broadcast on Channel 4 on Tuesday 3 February 2009. The programme saw 20 young children left without their parents or any direct adult supervision for two-weeks.

Every child showed abundant distress during the programme, which directly violates the rules set out in Section One (protection of under-eighteens) of the Ofcom Broadcasting code, which requires that:

Due care must be taken over the physical and emotional welfare and the dignity of people under eighteen who take part or are otherwise involved in programmes.

Despite the show's caveat that children could be removed from the show at any point by their parents, parents were also at liberty to compel their children to stay, despite it being clear that they wanted to leave. The resulting scenes showed children banging their heads against walls and sobbing convulsively. Once again, the broadcasting code clearly states that the emotional welfare of the children is paramount

irrespective of any consent given by the participant or by a parent, guardian or other person over the age of eighteen in loco parentis. People under eighteen must not be caused unnecessary distress or anxiety by their involvement in programmes or by the broadcast of those programmes.

Further, I do not believe that due consideration was given to the long- or short-term mental well-being of these children. As it was the first time that any of these children had lived in a world without adults, the bullying in the girls house and the physical violence in the boys is something that, given the circumstances, may well impact on the children as they prepare for their own adult lives. The code states that:

Material that might seriously impair the physical, mental or moral development of people under eighteen must not be broadcast

The programme was highly exploitative of these children. We urge you to prevent the remaining three episodes of the show from being broadcast.

Yours faithfully,

 

Clem Henricson
Deputy Chief Executive
Family and Parenting Institute

Penelope Leach Ph.D
Senior Research fellow
Department of Children, Families & Social Issues, Birkbeck

Clive Dorman
Director and Co-Founder
The Children's Project

Sue Gerhardt

 

Sir

As a group of academics and professionals we are alarmed that Channel 4 is broadcasting such an exploitative parenting series as Bringing Up Baby – the last part of which is to be shown tomorrow. Many techniques used in these programmes are outdated and completely fly in the face of our scientific knowledge about brain development in very young babies.

That anyone should be billed as an expert and allowed to promote ideas such as not making eye contact with babies and not comforting them when they are in distress is at best irresponsible and at worst dangerous. And to see these theories being put into practice with real babies in the name of entertainment is deeply worrying.

Last year, the Family and Parenting Institute surveyed parents to ask them their opinions on TV parenting programmes and some 83% of the respondents said that they found a technique in these programmes helpful to them. So with these programmes having such an influence on parents it is shocking that broadcasters are not exercising more responsibility.

Sadly the exploitation of both babies and children in the pursuit of high ratings is becoming ever more common: the BBC3 programme Baby Borrowers earlier this year was another case in point where babies and young children were "lent" to teenage couples in a programme that was intended to bring in viewers by being shocking.

We call on all production companies to stop making television programmes which give parents irresponsible advice and turn the suffering of tiny babies and children into adult entertainment.

Mary MacLeod
Chief Executive
Family and Parenting Institute

Penny Mansfield
Director
One plus One

Dorit Braun
Chief Executive
Parentline Plus
Dr Shirley Gracias
Chair
The Association for Infant Mental Health UK

Dr Cheryll Adams
Acting Lead Professional Officer
Unite-Community Practitioners and Health Visitors Association

Christine Bidmead
Chair of Health Visiting Forum
Unite-Community Practitioners and Health Visitors Association

Stephen Scott BSc FRCP FRCPsych
Professor of Child Health & Behaviour
Consultant Child & Adolescent Psychiatrist
King's College, London

Helen Dent
Chief Executive
Family Welfare Association

 

Eight years ago, I was involved in a BBC project called A Pocket Guide to Parenting. In a meeting with programmers I urged them to do more on parenting in prime time. They looked at me a bit witheringly - it was just too worthy; only if we could have parents and children in a make over show, would there be any chance to get more about raising children on TV. We all agreed that could never happen. How very wrong we were. How easy it has become to treat babies and children like badly designed rooms or overgrown gardens. I should have been more careful what I wished for.

We seem to have become afflicted by a poverty of the spirit and the imagination that makes it acceptable to consider, for example, taking a new born baby away from his or her parents to give to a childless couple for two weeks (before giving it back) so the childless couple can "live the dream", however short, of being new parents. This idea got as far as being seriously researched.

No idea that promises raw emotion and tears seems impossible. The producers of so-called reality television seem to be living in a parallel universe, where the exploitation of new born babies and their parents is an acceptable form of public entertainment, so long as it is dressed up as educational.

Reality television is a new genre, pushing back the boundaries of what is acceptable on television. Reality is a misnomer. Real life is so humdrum and banal, only truly sad people could get pleasure out of watching it through reel after aching reel. It has to be organised, manipulated and spiced to make a narrative that is dramatic. Ever more risky and vulnerable families involved to deliver the required emotional and dramatic charge.

The organisation of material means that the participants are actors in the depiction of their lives, not participants. Not the heroes of their lives but potentially its villains, fall-guys, dupes. Vulnerable. The way so-called reality TV deals with adults can be distasteful, making the audience complicit in bullying. But we need to think very seriously about its use of children.

A few years ago, Kellogs ran a recruitment ad:
"Coco Pops….and Frosties are just a few of the fun brands you will need to get under the skin of in this role. Here you will spend your time understanding kids, finding out what interests them, establishing which other brands they associate with and appreciating the realms of pester power."

Such naked acceptance of the Ad industry's cynical focus on children could not be featured so openly now. The Ad shows how distorted thinking can become so routine, so everyday that good people do not know they are involved in something that can be nasty. I am suggesting that the broadcasting industry has lost perspective.

Tiny babies are not commodities to be shunted around, their intimate lives exposed as if they were not human, without dignity, their distress not real - as if they have no significant feelings.

Bringing up Baby did get made, even though credible, serious organisations urged against it. Here three week old babies were "experimented" on by parenting gurus, some of whom were peddling dangerous outdated advice.

In programmes like I Smack and I'm Proud, Supernanny and the Baby Borrowers, we see babies and children in acute distress, ignored or manhandled. If this masquerades as public service broadcasting, it is time to call a halt and make absolutely sure that neither the children nor their relationships with their parents are harmed in the short or longer term. There has been no research commissioned to follow-up on children and families. We know from anecdote that some children have experienced bullying at school and that some participants bitterly regret having succumbed to the seduction of TV.

These shows claim credibility as experiments, information, advice or help. Apart from the fact that nothing sensible can be gleaned from a study of 3, 4 or 6 babies, no serious research on child rearing is done without the study meeting ethical standards and being conducted by bona fide researchers. Yet, Channel 4 is investigating whether Claire Verity, of the Bringing Up Baby gurus has turned out not to have the qualifications she said she had; and there were serious questions about the mentor involved in the ill-fated programme on mentoring at Fortismere School that left young people and parents troubled and miserable. So what kind of confidence can we have in programmers' claims about the quality of their 'behind the scenes' advisers? What generally happens is that experts are approached one after the other until someone says yes.

The quality of advice is important not only because of the welfare of the children on the show. There is also the risk of giving wrong advice to parents at home nearly 80% of whom, we know from our research, watch the parenting programmes and pick up tips. Tiny babies are particularly vulnerable in the first year. This has become increasingly evident from recent brain research. Parents at this time are vulnerable and anxious – many not having cared for babies or young children before. That is why the Dept of Health issues guidance to health professionals and parents on the care of infants and why we have a health visitor service. While no-one wants to bully mothers into breast-feeding if they cannot face it at all, the benefits of breast-feeding are life long and no advice should undermine parents by proposing extra feeds to get tiny babies sleeping.

We argue that babies and tiny children should not to be used in this way. Child actors need to be licensed by their local authority and those under five can only be under lights for half hour at a time and only perform for a total of two hours out of five a day between 9.30 am and 4.30 pm. We think similar requirements should exist for the protection of babies and young children on reality TV shows.

We plan, with partners across health and welfare, to draw up a charter for parents on good broadcasting practice drawing from the best of broadcasting involving children: a process of continuous consent not just one-off, freedom to withdraw at any time, and right of veto to scenes that would cause them or their children distress or shame.

We think that the rules that exist on the welfare of children should be rigorously adhered to with clear guidance about what is and is not acceptable. In fact the Broadcasting Code refers to the EU Convention on Human Rights but not to the UN Convention for the Rights of the Child. We commiserate with broadcasters that Ofcom has not been able to supply better help. The Broadcasting Code has 25 clauses on the protection of young listeners and watchers and only two on child participants.

1.26 Due care must be taken over the physical and emotional welfare and the dignity of people under eighteen who take part or are otherwise involved in programmes. This is irrespective of any consent given by the participant or by a parent, guardian or other person over the age of eighteen in loco parentis.

1.27 People under eighteen must not be caused unnecessary distress or anxiety by their involvement in programmes or by the broadcast of those programmes.

Ofcom is drawing up guidance now to flesh out these two clauses of the Broadcasting code. We have made submissions to Ofcom and would like to see the guidance strengthened and made mandatory, not as proposed, simply guidance.

The usual response to any concern voiced about broadcasting activity is: 'Well there is an off button. You don't have to watch'. To say that that audience control exercised through the off-button ensures appropriate broadcasting is a spurious argument, denying absolutely the power of the medium to seduce audience, participants and broadcasters themselves. It is easy to rubbish people like me as killjoys, squeamish, out of touch. And, no babies are not being physically tortured and nobody is being publicly hanged. But it is our sensitivity to babies and children and our care of them that makes us most human and humane.

Broadcasting provides the space within which we now build norms and practices of daily life and family life. So broadcasters must be encouraged to see that public service broadcasting means acting well for children.