If, like me, you've always sort of wondered if kids ought to have careers in show business, the new reality series "Showbiz Moms & Dads" will help convince you they shouldn't.

Unless those kids happen to be orphans, maybe.

This six-part series, which debuts tonight at 7 and 9 on cable's Bravo network, follows five families as they pursue fame and fortune. The parents all have three things in common — they all want their kids to be famous, they all insist they're doing it for their kids, and they're all obviously doing it for themselves, at least to some extent:

• Debbie Klingensmith, who's convinced that her 13-year-old son, Shane, is the next Backstreet Boy, despite the fact that he seems to have little singing talent.

• Tiffany Barron caters to her obnoxious 14-year-old daughter, Jordan, despite the fact that the child treats her abominably — and that her new husband lives hundreds of miles away while Tiffany tries to make Jordan a star.

• Kimberly Mosely-Stephens seems the least driven of the bunch — perhaps because her 8-year-old daughter, Jordan, is the most successful of the children on the series. But she's an agent and former entertainer who seems to be going after her own lost dreams as much as her daughter's.

• Debbie Tye drags her 4-year-old daughter to beauty pageants across the state of Florida. She resents the comparisons to JonBenet Ramsey, but they're unavoidable.

• And Duncan Nutter is a 42-year-old aspiring actor who dragged his wife and seven children away from their big house and comfortable life in Vermont to New York City, where they're jammed into a two-bedroom apartment and the kids are forced by their father to audition for various show-biz jobs.

"Nobody in the family really wants to go on auditions. It's just easier to go and get it over with," said 18-year-old Duncan Jr.

"Dad really wants to do this, and so I am doing this really because he wants to," said 8-year-old Isaiah Nutter. "I just don't want to make him feel like he's pushing us too far."

But he is. At best, it's pathetic. At worse, it's psychological child abuse.

"Friends of mine say, 'All you do is bark commands,' " Nutter says. "And I say, 'Well, when you have a boatload of kids then you can tell me how to do it. But until then, I'm just going to have to do it my way.' "

Regardless of the fact that none of his children seem interested in making his dreams their own.

All the parents go out of their way to justify their behavior, the common refrains being that it's all about their kids; it's good for their kids; it's what their kids really want.

"Sometimes I'm very tough on Jordan, but at the end of the day she knows that it's all about love," Kimberly Mosely-Stephens says after seeing her daughter cry her way through ballet lessons.