would you swap your life and family? (Wife Swap (Channel 4))

Member Name: wisemind

Product:	Wife Swap (Channel 4)
Date:	22/06/09 (119 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Complete voyeurism

Disadvantages: some disturbing parenting

Wife swap is a channel 4 show that takes two families both very diverse and swap the wives into each others homes for ten days. The wives may be part of a gay relationship or not married as well. The first program in the series is usually a celebrity wife swap.

Each wife writes a manual detailing how they live there life and what they believe. They initially get chance to have a look around their hosts home which is when they start to guess what family they are meeting and get chance to scan through the manual prior to meeting the family.

Each wife initially spends a few days living by the host family's rules and following the absent wife's manual to see how they actually live. This can mean a complete change of routine. It can be that they lie in bed and do virtually nothing or they can have a chaotically busy life.

Half way through the week they have rule change, this is when the visiting wife gets to enforce her rules they usually involve removing the fundamental belief and running of the household. The idea of this program is that they get to see life from another perspective and learn a little. Often these families truly believe that their way is the right way or the wives are deep down very unhappy with the relationship. Most families do seem to learn some lessons and you do get to catch up with how they are doing a few weeks later. The occasional family return to life as it was before and continue to live their blinkered life.

The episode I watched last night is a pretty typical episode. It featured a mother of a young toddler who fed her child crisps for breakfast, had a dirt house and lay in bed all morning. Once she did finally get up the baby was wet. She did no housework and just left it to her partner who worked full time as a Bus driver as she was busy spending 4-5 hours a day on the computer. She did get out though four times a week to karaoke without her husband.

The other woman was a freelance hairdresser who was always on the go. She doesn't want children despite her husband wanting them. She cleans to extreme and plumps her cushions up each day even if nobody has sat on them.

During the swap the mum finds actually working and been on the go all day extremely hard work. She actually falls asleep on the sofa before tea after her first day at work. The hairdresser not only is extremely bored but hates the mess and dirt around. She doesn't follow the rules and gives the little girl fruit for breakfast.

At the rule swap the mum decides to take life easy and not clean which helps both the host husband and her how it is better to share the housework. The hairdresser improves the cleanliness of the house and gives the little girl some structure and decent food. She did enjoy looking after the child and seemed to gain a lot. The host husband seemed to have little confidence and he was the one person I didn't see gain much from the program.
After the feedback session they went home the mum now does help with the housework, takes her daughter out to soft play at least once a week. The hairdresser is now not so obsessed with cleaning and is considering fostering.

The families featured in these programs are very extreme in the beliefs and behaviours. Often what is needed is some middle ground between the two families.

This is an easy entertainment program that occasionally brings outrage.

Summary: watch how the extreme families live