We all know that parents shape their children's lives, but how much do children shape their parents?

In this revelatory and surprising Cutting Edge documentary, the Tibbetts and the Cafearos - one family with four daughters, the other with four sons - agree to swap kids for a long weekend to find out.

What's it like being a 'minority parent' in your own home: a mother surrounded by men or a father in a house of women?

Mariann and Jon Tibbett have four daughters, aged from eight to 14 years old, while Karen and Steve Cafearo have four boys, aged from nine to 17.

Both couples think they got the better deal, even if it means the girls' dad, Jon, is regularly plastered with nail varnish and admits he spends too much time at work. Meanwhile, boys' mum Karen loses her sons to football at the bottom of the garden and doesn't even have a dressing table to call her own.

The weekend gives both sets of parents a glimpse of how their lives could have been and ask some tough questions about parts of their family lives that they may have chosen to ignore.

Karen finds herself surrounded, for the first time, by chatty girls, and Jon is soon re-living his boisterous boyhood with four energetic lads building catapults in the garden and joining in the obstacle courses.

Meanwhile, their partners have to accept being the odd one out for the first time. Boys' dad Steve loves competitive sports so hours of ballet lessons don't really do it for him, while girls' mum Marianne has to accept that the boys would rather be out playing games with dad than spending time doing the things she likes to do.

The experience prompts both couples to question how having all girls or all boys has impacted on their family's identity, and how it has altered their own relationships. But will it change how they act as parents and partners?