World's Strictest Parents: Why?

Julie has become addicted to a television show called "World's Strictest Parents". Of all the reality TV formats my children watch, I find this one the most peculiar. A pair of teenagers, one male, one female, are sent to live with another family for a week, usually in another country, sometimes in an entirely different culture. The surrogate parents are purportedly raising them "as their own" for the week, which invariably means treating them to a regime of hard manual labour, community service, and some pretty intrusive on-screen "counselling".  The "plot" varies very little from episode to epsiode - the teenagers arrive, strop around a bit, refuse to do the chores assigned to them and/or break the rules (usually involving alcohol or cigarettes), there is friction, then mid-week there is a break-through, perhaps a heart-to-heart, usually a tearful admission by the teenager of personal tragedy (divorced parents are popular, dead parents bring bonus points), and at the end of the week the teenagers are transformed, tearfully hugging their surrogate parents goodbye, swearing themselves to a life of sobriety and hard work, returning to the bosoms of their grateful families.

There is so much wrong with these shows that I cannot tear myself away from them.  My first question was why the teenagers (many of them British) agreed to do a show in which they will be frankly displayed as freaks - though I suspect that for many of them it represents a free trip to America (the typical destination).  Why America is the land where Parents Are Right I do not know, but it does rather make me wish I were American.  There seems to be no similar influx of American teens to Cardiff or Crawley (British parents must be too limp).  My second question was why the parents do it?  After all, most of them have children of their own - why take on someone else's rebellious brat?  Many of the parents are religious, and some do come across as genuinely caring and committed to the task of rearing the next generation.  But some are shockingly bigotted, with a breath-taking confidence in their own opinions - it seems to attract the sergeant-majors and the Little Hitlers of the parenting world.  Nowhere else is this so odious as in the "counselling" sessions, where the teenagers are urged to share their troubles with the stranger who has been bullying them throughout the week.  The extraordinary thing is that according to the cameras, these excrutiating sessions always seem to do the trick: the teenager suddenly understands why they are behaving badly, repents, everyone cries, the surrogate parent forgives them, everyone hugs.  It all looks so easy: why don't we all try this technique with the nearest stroppy teenager?  Perhaps Brits can't do the hug bit.  But if these families could process two teenagers a week for 52 weeks a year, we could send them over in relays, and the costs would be more than paid for by our savings on criminal justice.

Today's episode was typical.  I was rooting for the recalcitrant teens right from the start: they were rude, feisty, and full of attitude.  I thought they were great.  "Dad" seemed to have some sort of control issue.  He had decided the teens would clear up the yard of some friends of his who were struggling to manage their house while their baby was seriously ill in hospital.  For some reason best known to him, "dad" felt it was important to keep that back story to himself (though he shared it with the viewers): those bad teens had to clear up that yard not because they felt genuine compassion for a family in a tight spot, but because he had given them an order.  Predictably, the teens were disengaged from the task, bored and resentful.  Cue dressing-down from "dad", and then a tear-jerking explanation of the full story from their host.  Tears, and guilt in liberal quantities.  The teenagers had been set up to fail: they were young enough that if they had been given the justification at the beginning of the task, instead of the end, they would have put their heart and soul into it and felt proud of themselves.  Why on earth should they obey someone unquestioningly whom they had only just met?

My final question: why does Julie watch these shows?  Why does anyone, particularly a teenager?  Is it the delight of watching other teenagers squirm on camera and be broken-down?  The sense of justice being done?  Is it the vicarious emotional thrill of the contrived "happy endings"?  The format is successful - teens are flown all over the world to be harangued and exploited by strange families.  It is never quite clear whether these programs imply that strict parents are automatically good parents - probably they do, given the plotlines - but there is always the tantalizing possibility of moral ambiguity.  After all, are the real parents of these teenagers actually bad parents?  The programs stop just short of drawing this conclusion.  I did ask Julie if watching this show made her wish me to be a stricter parent: a question met with (predictable) horror.

My new format proposal for the 2012 season: World's Most Knackered Parents.  Parents of children with special or different needs are given two weeks' specialist respite care and all-expenses-paid vacations to be taken without children.  In return the cameras get almost unlimited access to the parents as they sun-bathe on the beach, try out spa treatments, and dine in the best restaurants.  If tear-jerking moments are needed, they can film couples trying to recall what their life was like before their children were born, and we can probably get some humour out of mum trying to struggle back into her old bikini.