Did you know that an estimated 15,000 monkeys are living with people as pets or surrogate children in the United States? It's true: real monkids with clothes and high chairs and diapers and bedrooms and strollers and play dates and everything. As part of a new series, The Outsiders, ABC has profiled some of these lucky primate parents.

This special comes as a resurgence of a semi-popular trend in the 1980s and 1990s, the most famous of the spoiled monkids, of course, being Bubbles, Michael Jackson's hirsute partner in crime (not literally). Bubbles lived the life that wild monkeys would surely give up their freedom for if they only knew what they were missing: his own assistant, matching MJ outfits, production input on Bad. But in the end, Bubbles was forced to hightail it to another ranch when things became too legally dicey for him at Neverland. But others, building on the Bubbles model, took to Tinsel Town in fast action.

In 1994, Ross's monkey Marcel made her debut on Friends. Her trainer once said, "If Monkey was human, she'd be Meryl Streep"—she was later written out of the show because of her humping and vomiting problems. (Yes, we hear the set of Mamma Mia was awash with similar behavior.) And then later in '94, Thora Birch acted alongside a ball cap-wearing monkey in Monkey Trouble. The difference, however, is that in the case of The Outsiders, substitute cheeky Thora Birch with a pensioner suffering from empty-nest syndrome.

So it seems we're overdue for this trend to resurface. After the current baby boom, celebrities just might realize that monkeys are like children that you don't have to worry about corrupting with your skewed moral values. One monkey mommy says, "I wanted a monkey because it's not going to grow up. And I'm not going to grow up." How young-Hollywood of her.

The Outsiders airs tonight, July 1, at 10 p.m. Eastern, right after the equally tasteful I Survived A Japanese Gameshow.