From Monday, a new reality TV show will begin on the Belgian channel VTM. The goal is to help people who did not know each other to have a child together.
On Monday, October 18, the private television channel VTM will launch a brand new reality TV program. The show is called “Ik wil een kind” (translation: ‘I want a child’) and the objective is a little particular since VTM proposes to bring together people who want a child but who cannot have one, to for medical or social reasons and to offer them a system of “conscious co-parenting”, also called programmed co-parenting.
To summarize : people who do not know each other at all, will participate in the show in order to conceive a baby together to later raise jointly. Here, no romantic relationship is planned between the future parents, who will also be able to carry out this adventure in number of two, three or four. Whatever their number, all will become parents of the unborn child, even those who are not biologically related.
The well-being of the child
However, having a baby together is not so easy from a legal point of view. Indeed, this form of family does not exist in Belgian legislation although it is increasingly present in society. Thanks to this reality TV show, the VTM television channel then sheds light on this worrying legal vacuum.
Over the course of the show, each candidate will be followed by experts, including a psychologist, a doctor and a lawyer. These specialists will have to guide him in the process, and establish modalities to protect the future child and to avoid potential conflicts with other parents.
But one aspect quickly became controversial: the well-being of the child. “Having a child is not the same as buying a house or finding a life partner”, said Flemish Youth Minister Benjamin Dalle, very worried about the situation. The Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Caroline Vrijens, for her part, believes that it is important to put this kind of co-parenting in the spotlight to spark debate, but it is according to her the show is far from be the right method. She also wished to recall that a child is not an object to which one has a right, but a subject who has rights himself.