The Baby Monitor Trap
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I wonder if you can tell me the story of Abby and Matt Howard. Who are they and what did they do? They are a parenting influencer couple, I guess. They were high school sweethearts and sort of young parents, I would say, that sort of share their life as young parents online. I was unaware of who they were until last year when they got in some trouble.

Stephanie Murray is a writer for The Atlantic, and she runs the newsletter Family Stuff. She recently wrote about the Howards in a piece for Slate, specifically an incident that occurred when the family had gone on a cruise late last year.

They had been putting the kids in the crew's daycare while the couple went to dinner. That just did not go well. The kids didn't like it. And then they decided, OK, instead, we're going to have the kids eat early. We'll put them to bed. And then, you know, we've got this FaceTime sort of like monitor using your phone as a makeshift baby monitor. The Internet did not approve. So that was...

Pretty quickly, it was met with a lot of backlash. People really did not like that idea. They thought it was very unsafe and were kind of shocked that the couple would do that.

Obviously, people on the Internet always have an opinion, especially when it comes to parenting. But the backlash the Howards faced seemed to be more hypothetical than normal. People were concerned about abduction. Like if you if you leave a child alone, you know, why would you ever leave a child alone while you're on vacation? Somebody might snatch them away. Then the other is forced.

a fire. People were concerned that, you know, what happens if a fire breaks out near the room, in the room, and you can't get back to save your kids. And then I think

A lot of the other concerns were just sort of they weren't really specific. It was kind of this vague sense that, well, something could happen. I don't know, spontaneous choking or something like that. Right. Like something could happen to the kids and you would need to be there immediately and you wouldn't have time to get there if you're if you're at a restaurant.

At the end of the day, the Howards ended up making a post to clarify the situation. They said that they had extended family with them and one member was always in the room with the kids, even when the baby monitor was on. I do want to clarify that we have not, would not, will not ever leave our children unattended.

We would never, ever want to put them in harm's way in any way. We spent a lot of our time on this boat in our staterooms manning the baby monitors. And if it wasn't for Abby's extended family, we really would have not gotten a chance to really get out of the room. So thank you to them. Did people believe them? I mean, I think it was a mixed bag, but a lot of people didn't.

The backlash surprised Stephanie. She had done a similar thing with her own child and knew many people who had done the same thing. Hell, I've done the same thing as well with my own child.

And the thing is, all that judgment lobbed at the Howards, it was based on very little information. It's hard to know, OK, how dangerous was this situation? In reality, we don't know. We don't know how far away they were. Maybe they were on fully, you know, a mile away on a giant cruise ship. And maybe that would make some people uncomfortable. Maybe I would even not do that. Right. But like, we don't really know. And it seemed like a...

It seemed like it could be a plausibly safe setup to me as someone who had done this many times before. What we do know is that the Howards had a baby monitor set up to watch their children, using the technology in the way it was meant to be used. But despite that, enough people on the Internet saw what they did as an egregious parenting error.

today on the show from baby monitors to scales how new technology brings new anxieties for parents and what the backlash toward the howards tells us about how we're judged for using that technology as a parent i'm shana roth filling in for lizzie o'leary and you're listening to what next tbd a show about technology power and how the future will be determined stick around

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I want to take a look back at American history and sort of open our history books here for a second, specifically how we have historically monitored our babies, toddlers, children. Let's say 100 years ago, how common was it for parents to be monitoring their babies constantly?

It's kind of tricky to sort out. I actually wasn't sure about this when I first started looking into it because I think we all kind of know that, yeah, you know, six-year-olds, seven-year-olds, eight-year-olds, right, like a long time ago, they had a much more free-range childhood and had more independence. But I actually wasn't sure about babies, right? Like, what did we do with babies 100 years ago? And what I learned was that

Generally speaking, really hypervigilant supervision of babies was something that was pretty much exclusive, only possible for wealthy mothers who had the ability to sort of outsource a lot of that child care. They could hire nannies, they could hire other people so that a baby was really closely monitored at all times for basically everyone else involved.

that was just not practical, right? So they, you know, if you were working on a farm or you were an enslaved woman, right, you generally left babies often in the care of older children. Or, you know, if you were working in a factory, you'd leave your child with an older woman in a tenement who's watching several babies at the same time. So

Janet Golden, this historian of childhood that I spoke to, pretty much was like, yeah, you didn't supervise babies all the time. That wasn't a thing back then for most people. At what point did it become more common for parents to be able to monitor their children? It seems like the inflection point was really in the post-World War II era. That was when you saw sort of this growth of the middle class. So, you know,

rising affluence in America meant that more people had the resources to kind of more closely monitor their kids, you know. And then there was other things that sort of went along with that, some of it being this sort of proliferation of parenting advice columns and expert advice, right? More people sort of sharing their thoughts about

about how you should raise your kids. Right. And then I think there's also a technological component to it. Advancing technology, I think, in a variety of ways kind of raised the standards of what would be considered adequate supervision. Yeah. And thinking about that technology, I mean, one of the key ways in which parents became able to closely monitor their child was through the baby monitor. Right.

When did parents start using those regularly? They really didn't become broadly available. And by that, I mean...

relatively inexpensive, such that, you know, maybe the median parent in America could get one until... You see them emerge on the market in, like, the 1980s and the video-monitored ones, you know, in the 1990s. They were still fairly expensive then, but as they emerged, then pretty quickly cheaper models start showing up. So I would say, like,

Probably the 1990s, early 2000s is where you start to see like, OK, now it's getting the point where kind of this is within reach for basically everybody or for a lot of people.

I'm curious about the marketing. You know, you have this new technology where basically they're saying, hey, you can watch your baby all the time. Was that appealing to people in its inception? And was that how it was marketed to parents? When I spoke to a researcher named Alex Perry, who studies the history of public health, he said that basically from the beginning, the way that baby monitors were

were marketed was as offering sort of rest, right? You know, that you could step away from your child. You don't need to be hovering near them. And also sort of peace of mind. You know they're safe. You can step away and you're okay. But then also almost immediately after these things become fairly widespread, then there

people were questioning that and sort of realizing like, oh, wait, is it offering peace of mind or is it heightening anxiety about, is my baby okay? Yeah, let's dig into that anxiety because a theme that crops up a lot in your piece is the idea that technology promises us this convenience, as you said, this peace of mind, but it brings about a whole new set of anxieties. What were the anxieties that came about with

with the baby monitor that maybe weren't there when women or families were able to just sort of like, well, I'm going to put the baby in the crib for a couple hours and go do my work. The first level is just sort of as these things became available, they were steadily viewed as essential, right? So the notion of not having eyes on your baby at all times suddenly became bad, which

to be clear, as we said before, was very normal before. You didn't have your eyes on your baby all the time before. So now we've got the technology and yes, okay, now I need to know what my baby's doing at all times, right? But then I also think that it, with that information, it can sort of generate new anxieties, partially just through the, you

you know, the actual technology itself, you know, especially early monitors, they had cords and, you know, there was some concern that like people wanted the baby monitor to be as close as possible to the baby because they wanted to be able to hear every breath and make sure that they were breathing and blah, blah, blah, right? But then that also meant that, okay, well, if the baby grabs the monitor, they could get, you know, like strangled, right? And there was

Or maybe, you know, maybe the monitor will set on fire or something like that. Right. So it sort of brought about actual literal concerns just based on the technology itself. Right. And then also it's sort of like if you I think before, if you didn't have the monitor installed,

sort of trained on this baby at all times, you were kind of just assuming that they were continuing to breathe, right? And you were kind of just, you weren't really worrying about what different sounds made because you probably couldn't hear them unless the sound was pretty loud. But now you can literally hear and see everything that your baby is doing. And so then that means that, oh, oh, they kind of like, wait, are they breathing?

are they breathing? Are they still breathing? You know, like I can't quite hear it on the monitor, right? Or, you know, oh, they made some sort of sound here. You would have, you know, 100 years ago, you wouldn't have heard that sound and wouldn't have been concerned about it. But now you can hear the sound. So you're going, what's that mean? When we come back, how technology altered the way we think about parenting.

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See terms at discover.com slash credit card. One thing we've seen over time is that with new technology comes new expectations about how we live. Think of the invention of the washing machine. Before it, washing your clothes was back-breaking labor that would take all day. You needed to make your own soap, individually scrub each piece of clothing, and then hang them to dry.

Stephanie talked with historians who told her the expectation was that you washed your clothes by the season.

Then the washing machine was invented. And now the expectation is we wash our clothes whenever they get dirty. Stephanie sees similarities in how technology shifted our expectations on parenting. Baby scales are another example of that. You know, people, that was, I think, Janet Golden, the historian, told me that was sort of like the first thing

good example of like a baby specific technology that really ramped up expectations and in some ways anxieties, because before you didn't, you know, people started they would literally bring their babies to the butcher to be weighed and they would do that maybe once a month. Right. But then once it became possible for everybody to have or pretty much everybody to have a scale in their home, then everybody's weighing their baby every single day. And they're you know, if you gain weight

announce, you know, it's cause for celebration and you lose an ounce. Oh, my gosh, we're going to call the doctor, that sort of thing. Right. I think the same, a similar kind of pattern has happened with baby monitors. Right. You just now that we have the technology that allows us to supervise babies at all times and know exactly what's happening with them, what sounds they're making, whether they're breathing, et cetera, et cetera. The expectation is that you have eyes on your kids at all times.

And with new expectations comes new judgments on how to properly raise your child. In her piece, Stephanie talks about a study from the University of California, Irvine from 2016. That study asked participants to assess the risk of a child that was left unsupervised by their parents for a short period of time. The study offered a few different reasons for why the parent was leaving their child behind.

In one example, the parent is returning a library book and gets, you know, hit by a car and then is knocked unconscious for 15 minutes. Right. Or in another one, they're running into the library to pick up a paycheck. Or in another one, they're, you know, they're going behind the library to meet their lover. I don't know why you would go behind the library to meet your lover, but whatever. Right. So they wanted to see, OK, how how does this

When you ask people, OK, how much danger is that child in for that 15 minute period or whatever it is, you know, does does their assessment of risk vary based on the reason for the for the parent being gone? It shouldn't. Right. It really shouldn't. You know, if the parent is gone for 15 minutes and the kid is sitting in a car, you know.

The risk should be the same regardless of why the parent is gone. But that's not what people said in pretty much everybody was like, yeah, the kid who has been left alone for 15 minutes intentionally by the parent, especially for sort of this nefarious reason of meeting a lover, right, is in more danger than a child whose parent has been knocked unconscious, you know, unwillingly by a car, which I think speaks to

Well, the sort of the way that our like moral intuitions cloud our ability to assess risk in a consistent way.

And it feels like a lot of our neuroses and anxieties, at least today, come in part from judgment, the fear of judgment by others, either online or just like strangers. I mean, you pointed out that parents have been arrested and gotten in actual legal trouble for leaving their children in hotel rooms or in staterooms on cruise ships. I mean, America in particular, I think, had...

a pretty robust system for policing parents in the sense that we make it very easy, right? We require states to sort of operate these hotlines that allow anybody to report suspected child abuse or neglect. And, you know, okay, that seems good. I want people to be able to report child abuse and neglect, right? But it does mean that we have a very large

This is sort of actually another example of technology, right? Anybody can call this hotline, right? And it's very easy. We all have smartphones, right? You see a kid walking alone on the street. Well, pull out your smartphone. You can call this hotline and take this kind of like better safe than sorry approach. Right.

to suspected child abuse and neglect. Right. So what where that has led us in America is that we have a very high rate of of children being reported or or actually investigated for suspected child abuse and neglect.

about a third of kids will come into contact with the CPS system in some way, whether because they were just reported. You know, a lot of those are strained out, but they might actually be investigated. And in some cases, the parents are charged. Right. There's there's problems with that in the sense that even if you're investigated and you ultimately are not, you know, convicted or something,

Those investigations are really tough and scary for parents, right? It's a frightening thing to, you know, have the threat of your child being taken away sort of looming over you. You know, you're in a very vulnerable position. And then on top of that, I do think that it has sort of a chilling effect on parents' abilities to kind of make decisions that they think are reasonable. It's very hard for them to sort of manage things

inherent risks of parenthood in a sensible way without kind of worrying about this, you know, this threat of investigation or even, you know, legal action. Yeah. And where I think I'm hung up is the balance here, because I feel like we should want people to

to speak up if they see something concerning. I mean, the people who go into a hotel room, I think there was one case where I think it was housekeeping came into a hotel room and she just comes upon these kids that are sleeping and there's no adults, there's no supervision there. I mean, I feel like in the event that there isn't parents watching on a monitor or that there is something wrong here, that we want people to speak up and say something when they see something concerning.

I think that's a good point. I guess where I would be a little bit concerned is the sort of defaulting to, you

well, let's report them to the authorities, right? You know, because I do think that that is, in some ways, we've created this sort of frictionless approach to dealing with, hmm, I'm concerned for these kids. What do I do? Maybe in a world without that, how would you express your concern? Well, you'd probably go look for the parents. You'd tell the hotel management, right? You would probably have to sort of have...

maybe some more uncomfortable conversations, but it would probably more directly involve the parents themselves and really getting to the bottom of the situation. I think the sense that I got from a lot of

You know, CPS, like experts, people who are studying this. And and to be clear, there are a lot of people who are concerned about how pervasive these investigations have gotten. Right. Their sense is that the now standard approach is for people to sort of take this like when in doubt reported type of approach that turns.

that kind of skips over any kind of interpersonal investigation, like, okay, is this something that I really need to report? Are the kids okay, right? And is this something that really warrants legal action? There's sort of this defaulting to, well, you know what, I'll just tell the authorities and then they can sort it out, right? Without

people quite realizing what sort of costs even a simple investigation might inflict on the parents and the family involved. Well, especially because a lot of this is just so case-by-case basis. Like, as we pointed out at the beginning with the Howard family, like, we have no idea how far away they were from their kids. They were clearly close enough that they were able to get

you know, a Wi-Fi connection of some flavor. And in some cases, if you leave your hotel and go down for a drink, I mean, that's basically like leaving a house in the suburbs. You know, if your kids are on the second story and you go in the backyard, like there is no way of actually setting very specific parameters because you have so many variables, not to mention the age and behavior of the kids. Right.

And so I guess what is the middle ground of parents aren't allowed to have fun and you need to have your child in sight at literally every second? I think you've hit on something that...

is central to this whole discussion, which is that that, yes, it's actually not possible. Like there are people who are sort of fighting to make the laws surrounding child abuse and neglect, particularly child neglect, more specific so that people, parents have a better understanding of what is actually going to get them in trouble. And, you know, when should I actually if I'm a bystander, when should I actually report this? Right.

But even in the most specific of those proposed statutes, you can't really get that specific because ultimately parenting and then all the risk management that you do as a parent is, you can't really make broad-based rules for it. It's very situation-specific inherently so, right? I say in this piece that I've done this with my kids many times, but there are

With other kids, would I necessarily make the same call? I can imagine plenty of scenarios where, you know, maybe this baby that I'm about to have has, you know, is prone to having seizures or something like that, right? Or they have some, their personality is just sort of different. Maybe they're very wakeful. Maybe they, you know, lots of different scenarios. Maybe they just get up and walk around a lot.

Exactly. They don't sleep well, right? You know, one of the reasons that I always felt so confident about this is that I just knew my kids' sleep patterns. And once they were kind of out, they were out for a chunk of time, right? So I just kind of knew that about them. If that was not the case, I might make a very, very different set of decisions, right? And that's not possible to sort of inscribe those judgment calls into law. By the very same token, those decisions...

A lot of bystanders simply don't have the information that they need in order to actually judge whether or not you have made a sensible decision. Right. So I guess where I would say where I would like the middle ground to go, like where I think we'll find more middle ground.

is that like acknowledging that, yes, I love that people are sort of concerned for kids. Right. But if there was a bit more humility in sort of assessing parents' decisions and sort of thinking, hey, do I actually have is this something that we can that we can judge based on some sort of like broad blanket rule that you never leave a child alone? Probably.

Probably not. Do I have the actual information to assess whether something negligent has happened here? Probably not. Or maybe not. Right. Maybe I should look into it a little bit more before I default to, hey, I'm going to report you to the police. Stephanie Murray, thanks for chatting with me about this. Yeah. Thank you for having me. It's been fun.

Stephanie Murray is a contributing writer at The Atlantic. She also runs the newsletter Family Stuff. And that is it for our show today. What Next TBD is produced by Patrick Fort and Evan Campbell. Our show is edited by Rob Gunther. Slate is run by Hilary Fry. TBD is part of the larger What Next family. And if you like what you heard, the best way to support us is by getting a Slate Plus membership. You get all of your Slate podcasts, including this one,

ad-free. Just head over to slate.com slash whatnextplus to sign up. We'll be back next week with more episodes. I'm Shaina Roth, in for Lizzie O'Leary. Thanks for listening.