I assume parents see there teenager as a free babysitter. Someone who is morally obliged to accept the task of looking after there beloved relation. Its emotional blackmail. Parents are just as equipped at manipulating us as we are at manipulating them~ and it sucks. They know we can’t refuse the job; teenagers are very loyal to their families, even if we pretend we aren’t.

‘My parents are always just dumping the baby on me’, says 15 year old Flo. ‘They are always heading out the door and just call back, ‘We’re just popping out for a bit’. It’s really annoying’

But this is happening all over. It’s a sad fact that parents are becoming less hands on and teenagers can end up bearing the full weight of the younger child. The number of teenagers adopting siblings after the death of a parent as opposed to grandparents or family friends is rising. The number of times the average teenager baby-sits for their siblings each week is three times and each of these sessions last on average from 1-3 hours.

Teen star Mary-Kate Olsen with little sister Lizzie

The burden of babysitting can get too much though. Every other person in my classes at college find that they are rudely awaken in the night to find that there little sister has had a nightmare and wants to get in with them. After college whilst trying to do homework, their little brother will enter there room after attention. Although these things may seem small, the lack of sleep and the lack of privacy to do things like homework can really affect your grades. All the times that you spend looking after your siblings could have been used for homework or for your own social reasons. Instead people are replacing there social time with babysitting and homework time with socialising.

‘Of course I’d rather spend time hanging out with my friends then doing my homework’ says Jessica, 17. ‘with looking after my sister and my part time job I never get to see my friends, so I have to admit, I do get a bit behind on my homework’.

Younger siblings have it all worked out. They know that should they crawl into their parents bed at night within five minutes that parent will be returning them to their own room. However a small child knows there teenage sibling will not do this through laziness or just the inability to say know to their cute little brother. They also know that teenagers are more lenient with rules then their parents too.

Timothy, 16, has it sorted out, ‘Me and my parents have a system. At weekend I’ll baby-sit for up to three hours but during the week, that my time. They have to ‘book’ me way in advance for college evenings’.