The competing shows place a no-nonsense British nanny in a chaotic home with wild kids and ineffective parents. The nanny observes, tsk-tsks, offers some tough-love advice to parents and imposes control. The programs intersperse interviews with parents and nannies with repeated shots of kids hitting, crying, refusing to go to bed and pitching fits.

ABC's "Supernanny," based on a British show of the same title with the same nanny, Jo Frost, premiered Jan. 17. Frost also wrote a book, "Supernanny: How to Get the Best From Your Children," published by Hyperion this month.

"Nanny 911," which premiered in the fall, ranked about 50th in TV ratings. It rotates several nannies with different families. (Though it aired first, it's actually the copycat.) It's on hiatus but Fox is shooting more episodes.

"These shows address real anxieties that parents feel, that they're not good enough parents and their kids are not as successful as they want them to be," said Steven Mintz, co-chairman of the nonprofit Council on Contemporary Families.

With fewer ties to extended family, "we often know very little about how others live," said Mintz, a history professor at the University of Houston. "These shows are peepholes into other people's private lives." And let's face it: "People have always liked spying on their neighbor," said author and University of Washington sociologist Pepper Schwartz. "This is just applying the reality TV formula to a new location."

Practical advice

Much of the advice is common sense, but parents don't always realize they're not following it. "We don't see how bad it is when we do it," said Schwartz, noting the shows serve as a sort of mirror. "But watching another parent on TV, it's 'Wow, is that what I look like when I yell?' "

The shows' archetypes — overwhelmed moms who don't discipline, uninvolved dads and dictatorial tots — offer a lesson on what not to do, said former Seattle nanny Zipporah Lomax. "A little bit of structure and consistency go a long way," she said.

"'Nanny 911' shows that pretty clearly."

Viewers will fall into two camps: "Those terrible parents!" or "Hmm, I've done that."

After watching an episode where the parents yelled constantly, one couple decided to change. "We only have two kids, but it gets loud in our house a lot," noted a December posting on the "Nanny 911" message board. "So I said to my husband, 'If they can do it, why can't we?'

"My 8-year-old son woke up yelling at me. I got close to him and told him that we are not yelling in this house anymore. That morning was the hardest!"

But after two weeks, "my house is a much more peaceful place."

For dramatic purposes, the shows distill a week's worth of interaction into an hour, with repeated clips of the kids' most dreadful manners. Imagine the worst minutes of your worst day flickering on screen over and over. ("Nanny 911" gives participants a prize, such as a trip, at the end; in "Supernanny," a calmer household is the reward.)

The families differ from the statistical norm in the number of kids — several featured families had five kids, one had seven — and in that all are white, financially comfortable and married.