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0:50

I wonder if you can tell me

0:52

the story of Abby and Matt Howard.

0:54

Who are they and what did they

0:56

do? They are a

0:58

parenting influencer couple, I

1:00

guess. They were high school sweethearts.

1:04

And sort of young parents, I

1:06

would say, that sort of share their

1:08

life as young parents online. I

1:10

was unaware of who

1:12

they were until last

1:15

year when they got in

1:17

some trouble. Stephanie Murray

1:19

is a writer for The Atlantic,

1:21

and she runs the newsletter Family Stuff.

1:23

She recently wrote about the Howard's in

1:25

a piece for Slate, specifically, an

1:28

incident that occurred when the family had gone

1:30

on a cruise late last year. They

1:32

had been putting the kids in the

1:34

in the crew's daycare while the couple

1:36

went to dinner. That just did not

1:38

go well. The kids didn't like it.

1:41

And then they decided, OK, instead, we're

1:43

going to have the kids eat early.

1:45

We'll put them to bed. And then,

1:47

you know, we've got this FaceTime sort of

1:49

like monitor using your

1:51

phone to as a

1:54

makeshift baby monitor. The

1:56

internet did not approve.

1:59

So that pretty

2:02

quickly was met with

2:04

a lot of backlash. People really

2:06

did not like that idea. They

2:08

thought it was very unsafe and

2:10

were kind of shocked that the

2:12

couple would do that. Obviously,

2:19

people on the internet always

2:21

have an opinion, especially when

2:23

it comes to parenting. But

2:25

the backlash the Howard's faced

2:28

seemed to be more hypothetical

2:30

than normal. People were concerned

2:32

about abduction like if you if you

2:34

leave a child alone, you know, why would

2:36

you ever leave a child alone? While

2:38

you're on vacation somebody might snatch them away

2:40

then the other is

2:42

a Fire people were concerned that

2:45

you know what happens if a fire breaks

2:47

out near the room in the room and

2:49

you can't get back to save your kids

2:51

and then I think a

2:54

lot of the other concerns were just

2:56

sort of They weren't really specific.

2:58

It was kind of this vague sense

3:00

that, well, something could happen. I

3:02

don't know, spontaneous choking or something like

3:05

that, right? Like something could happen

3:07

to the kids and you would need

3:09

to be there immediately and you

3:11

wouldn't have time to get there if

3:13

you're at a restaurant. At

3:16

the end of the day, the Howards ended up

3:18

making a post to clarify the situation. They

3:20

said that they had extended family with

3:22

them, and one member was always in the

3:24

room with the kids, even when the

3:26

baby monitor was on. I do want

3:28

to clarify that we have not,

3:30

would not, will not ever leave our

3:32

children unattended. We would never ever

3:35

want to put them in harm's way in any way.

3:37

We spent a lot of our time on this

3:39

boat in our state rooms manning the baby monitors

3:41

and if it wasn't for Abby's extended family we

3:43

really would have not gotten a chance to really

3:45

get out of the room so thank you to

3:47

them. Did people believe them? I mean

3:49

I think it was a mixed bag but a

3:51

lot of people didn't. The backlash

3:53

surprised Stephanie. She had done a similar

3:55

thing with her own child and knew

3:58

many people who had done the same

4:00

thing. Hell, I've done the same thing

4:02

as well with my own child. And

4:05

the thing is, all that judgment

4:07

lobbed at the Howard's, it was

4:09

based on very little information. It's

4:12

hard to know, okay, how dangerous was

4:14

this situation? In reality, we don't know,

4:16

we don't know how far away they were.

4:18

Maybe they were fully, you know, a mile

4:20

away on a giant. cruise ship

4:22

and maybe that would make some people

4:24

uncomfortable maybe I would even not do

4:26

that right but like we don't really

4:28

know and it seemed like

4:30

a It seemed like it could be

4:33

a plausibly safe Set up to

4:35

me as someone who had done this

4:37

many times before What

4:42

we do know is that the Howard's had

4:44

a baby monitor set up to watch

4:46

their children, using the technology in the way

4:48

it was meant to be used. But

4:50

despite that, enough people on

4:52

the internet saw what they did

4:54

as an egregious parenting error. Today

4:57

on the show. from baby

4:59

monitors to scales, how

5:01

new technology brings new

5:04

anxieties for parents, and

5:06

what the backlash toward the Howard's

5:08

tells us about how we're judged

5:10

for using that technology as a parent.

5:13

I'm Shayna Roth, filling in for Lizzie

5:15

O 'Leary, and you're listening to What

5:17

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5:19

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5:21

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and NPM wherever you get

7:06

your podcasts. I

7:13

want to take a look back

7:15

at American history and sort of

7:17

open our history books here for

7:19

a second. Specifically, how we have

7:21

historically monitored our babies, toddlers, children.

7:23

Let's say 100 years ago, how

7:25

common was it for parents to

7:27

be monitoring their babies constantly? It's

7:30

kind of tricky to sort out I actually

7:32

wasn't sure about this when I first started looking

7:34

into it because I think we all kind of

7:36

know that yeah You know six year old seven

7:38

year olds eight year olds right like a

7:40

long time ago They had a much more

7:42

free -range childhood and where it had more

7:44

independence But I actually wasn't sure about babies

7:47

right like what did we do with babies a

7:49

hundred years ago? and what I

7:51

learned was that Generally

7:53

speaking really hyper

7:55

-vigilant supervision of babies

7:58

was something that was pretty

8:00

much exclusive, that only possible for

8:02

wealthy mothers who had the

8:04

ability to sort of outsource a

8:06

lot of that child care.

8:09

They could hire nannies, they could

8:11

hire other people so that a

8:13

baby was really closely monitored

8:15

at all times for basically

8:17

everyone else. that was just

8:19

not practical right so they you know if

8:21

you were working on a farm

8:23

or you were an enslaved

8:26

woman right you you

8:28

generally left babies often in

8:30

the care of older children or

8:32

you know if you were

8:34

working in a factory you'd leave

8:36

your your child with an

8:39

older woman in a tenement who's

8:41

watching several babies at the

8:43

same time so Janet Golden, this

8:45

historian of childhood that I spoke

8:47

to pretty much was like, yeah, you didn't

8:49

supervise babies all the time. That wasn't

8:51

a thing back then, for most people. At

8:53

what point did it become more

8:56

common for parents to be able

8:58

to monitor their children? It

9:00

seems like the inflection point was really

9:02

in the post -World War II era. That was

9:04

when you saw sort of this growth of

9:06

the middle class, so, you know, rising

9:08

affluence in...

9:11

meant that more people had

9:13

the resources to kind of

9:15

more closely monitor their kids, you

9:17

know? And then there was

9:19

other things that sort of went

9:22

along with that, some of

9:24

it being this sort of proliferation

9:26

of parenting advice columns and

9:28

expert advice, right? More people sort

9:30

of sharing their thoughts about

9:33

how you should raise your

9:35

kids, right? And then I

9:37

think there's also a technological

9:39

component to it. advancing technology,

9:41

I think, in a variety of

9:43

ways, kind of raised the standards of

9:45

what would be considered adequate

9:48

supervision. Yeah, and thinking about

9:50

that technology, I mean, one of the

9:52

key ways in which parents became able

9:54

to closely monitor their child was through

9:56

the baby monitor. When

9:58

did parents start using those regularly? They

10:01

really didn't become broadly available,

10:03

and by that I mean... Relatively

10:06

inexpensive such that that you

10:08

know, maybe the median parent

10:10

in America could could get

10:13

one until you see them

10:15

emerge on the market In

10:17

like the 1980s and the

10:19

video monitored ones, you know

10:21

in the 1990s they were

10:23

still fairly expensive then but

10:25

as they emerge then pretty

10:27

quickly cheaper models start showing

10:29

up so I would say

10:31

like probably the 1990s early

10:33

2000s where you start to

10:35

see like, okay, now it's getting the

10:37

point where kind of this is within

10:39

reach for basically everybody or for a

10:41

lot of people. I'm curious

10:43

about the marketing. You know,

10:45

you have this new technology where

10:47

basically they're saying, hey, you can

10:49

watch your baby all the time.

10:52

Was that appealing to people in

10:54

its inception? And was that how

10:56

it was marketed to parents?

10:58

When I spoke to a researcher

11:00

named Alex Perry, who studies

11:02

the history of public health, he

11:04

said that basically from the

11:06

beginning, the way that baby

11:08

monitors were marketed was as

11:10

offering sort of rest, right? That

11:13

you could step away from your child. You

11:15

don't need to be hovering near them. And also

11:17

sort of peace of mind. You know they're

11:19

safe. You can step away and you're OK. But

11:22

then also almost immediately

11:24

after these things

11:27

become fairly widespread, then

11:30

people were questioning that

11:32

and sort of realizing like, oh

11:34

wait, is it offering peace of mind

11:36

or is it heightening anxiety about, is

11:39

my baby okay? Yeah, let's dig

11:41

into that anxiety because a theme that

11:43

crops up a lot in your piece

11:45

is the idea that technology promises

11:47

us this convenience. As you said, this

11:49

peace of mind, but it brings

11:52

about a whole new set of

11:54

anxieties. What were the anxieties

11:56

that came about with the

11:58

baby monitor that maybe weren't there

12:00

when women or families were

12:02

able to just sort of like, well, I'm going to put the baby in the

12:04

crib for a couple hours and go do my

12:06

work? The first level is just

12:09

sort of as these things became

12:11

available, they were steadily

12:13

viewed as essential, right? So the

12:15

notion of not having eyes

12:17

on your baby at all times

12:19

suddenly became bad, which to

12:22

be clear as we said before was very

12:24

normal before you didn't have your eyes on

12:26

your baby all the time before so now

12:28

we've got the technology and yes okay now

12:30

i need to know what my baby is doing

12:32

at all times right but then i

12:34

also think that it um with

12:36

that information it can

12:38

sort of generate new

12:40

anxieties Partially just through

12:43

the actual technology itself, especially

12:45

early monitors, they had cords and

12:47

there was some concern that

12:49

people wanted the baby monitor to

12:51

be as close as possible

12:53

to the baby because they wanted

12:55

to be able to hear

12:57

every breath and make sure that they were breathing. But

13:01

then that also meant that, okay,

13:03

well, if the baby grabs

13:05

the monitor, they could get strangled.

13:09

Or maybe, you know, maybe the monitor

13:11

will set on fire or something like

13:13

that, right? So it's sort of brought

13:15

about actual literal concerns just based on

13:17

the technology itself, right? And

13:20

then also, it's

13:22

sort of like, if you,

13:25

I think before, if you

13:27

didn't have the monitor sort

13:30

of trained on this baby at all

13:32

times, you were kind of just assuming

13:35

that they were continuing to breathe, right?

13:37

And you were kind of just, you

13:39

weren't really worrying about what different sounds

13:41

made because you probably couldn't hear them

13:43

unless the sound was pretty loud. But

13:45

now you can literally hear and see

13:47

everything that your baby is doing. And

13:49

so then that means that, oh, oh,

13:52

they kind of like, wait. Are they breathing? Are they

13:54

still breathing? You know, like, I can't quite hear it

13:56

on the monitor, right? Or, you know, uh

13:58

-oh, they made some sort of sound here. You would have, you

14:01

know, 100 years ago, you wouldn't have heard that sound.

14:03

I wouldn't have been concerned about it. But now you

14:05

can hear the sound, so you're going, what's that mean?

14:10

When we come back, how technology

14:12

altered the way we think

14:14

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17:09

we've seen over time is

17:11

that with new technology comes new

17:13

expectations about how we live. Think

17:15

of the invention of the washing machine.

17:18

Before it, washing your clothes was

17:20

backbreaking labor that would take

17:22

all day. You needed to make

17:24

your own soap, individually scrub each piece

17:26

of clothing, and then hang them to

17:29

dry. Stephanie talked with

17:31

historians who told her the expectation

17:33

was that you washed your clothes

17:35

by the season. Then

17:37

the washing machine was invented. And

17:40

now the expectation is we wash

17:42

our clothes whenever they get dirty. Stephanie

17:45

sees similarities in how

17:47

technology shifted our expectations

17:49

on parenting. Baby scales

17:51

are another example of that. You

17:53

know, people, um, that was,

17:55

I think Janet Golden, the

17:57

historian told me that was sort of like the

17:59

first good example of

18:01

like a baby specific technology

18:03

that really ramped up expectations

18:06

and in some ways anxieties

18:08

because before you didn't, you

18:10

know, people started, they

18:12

would literally bring their babies to the

18:14

butcher to be weighed and they

18:16

would do that maybe once a month,

18:18

right? But then once it became

18:20

possible for everybody to have or pretty

18:22

much everybody to have a scale

18:24

in their home, then everybody's weighing their

18:26

baby every single day and they're,

18:29

you know, if you gain an ounce,

18:31

you know, it's cause for, or it's cause for

18:33

celebration and you lose an ounce, oh my gosh,

18:35

we got to call the doctor, that sort of

18:37

thing, right? I think the

18:39

same similar kind of pattern has

18:41

happened with with baby monitors,

18:43

right? Now that we

18:45

have the technology that allows us to

18:47

supervise babies at all times and know

18:49

exactly what's happening with them, what sounds

18:51

they're making, whether they're breathing, et cetera,

18:54

et cetera, the expectation is

18:56

that you have eyes on your kids

18:58

at all times. And with

19:00

new expectations comes new judgments

19:02

on how to properly raise

19:04

your child. In

19:06

her piece, Stephanie talks about a

19:08

study from the University of California

19:10

Irvine from 2016. That

19:13

study asked participants to assess the

19:15

risk of a child that

19:17

was left unsupervised by their parents

19:19

for a short period of

19:21

time. The study offered a

19:23

few different reasons for why the parent

19:25

was leaving their child behind. in

19:28

one example, the parent is returning a

19:30

library book and gets, you know,

19:32

hit by a car and then is

19:34

knocked unconscious for 15 minutes,

19:36

right? Or in another one, they're

19:38

running into the library to pick up

19:40

a paycheck. Or in

19:42

another one, they're, you know, they're going

19:44

behind the library to meet their lover, you

19:46

know? I don't know why you would go behind

19:48

the library to meet your lover, but whatever. Right,

19:51

so they wanted

19:53

to see, okay, how

19:55

does... you ask people, okay, how

19:58

much danger is that child in for that

20:00

15 minute period or whatever

20:02

it is, you know, does

20:04

their assessment of risk vary based on

20:06

the reason for the parent being gone?

20:09

It shouldn't, right? It really shouldn't. You

20:11

know, if the parent is gone for 15 minutes and

20:13

the kid is, you know, sitting in a car, you

20:15

know, the risk should

20:18

be the same regardless of why

20:20

the parent is gone. But that's

20:22

not what people said in pretty

20:24

much everybody was like, yeah, the

20:27

kid who has been left alone for

20:29

15 minutes intentionally by the parent,

20:31

especially for sort of this nefarious reason

20:33

of meeting a lover, right, is

20:35

in more danger than a child

20:37

whose parent has been knocked unconscious, you

20:39

know, unwillingly by a

20:41

car, which I think speaks

20:43

to, well, the

20:46

sort of the way

20:48

that our like moral intuitions

20:50

cloud our ability to assess

20:52

risk in a consistent way.

20:55

And it feels like a

20:57

lot of our neuroses and

20:59

anxieties, at least today, come

21:01

in part from judgment, the

21:03

fear of judgment by others, either

21:05

online or just like strangers. I

21:07

mean, you pointed out that parents

21:09

have been arrested and gotten an

21:11

actual legal trouble for leaving their

21:13

children in hotel rooms or in

21:15

state rooms on cruise ships. I

21:17

mean, America in particular, I think, a

21:20

pretty robust system for

21:22

policing parents in the sense

21:25

that we make it very

21:27

easy, right? We require states

21:29

to sort of operate these

21:31

hotlines that allow anybody to

21:33

report suspected child abuse or

21:35

neglect. And, you know, okay,

21:37

that seems good. I want people

21:39

to be able to

21:42

report child abuse and neglect, right? But

21:44

it does mean that we have

21:46

a very This is sort of actually

21:48

another example of technology, right? Anybody can

21:50

call this hotline, right? And it's very

21:52

easy. We all have smartphones, right? You

21:54

see a kid walking alone on the

21:56

street. Well, pull out your smartphone. You

21:58

can call this hotline and and take

22:00

this kind of like

22:02

better safe than sorry approach

22:04

to suspected child abuse

22:07

and neglect, right? So

22:09

what where that has led us

22:11

in America is that we have

22:13

a very high rate of of

22:15

children being reported or

22:17

actually investigated for suspected child

22:19

abuse and neglect, about a third

22:21

of kids will come into

22:23

contact with the CPS system in

22:25

some way, whether because they

22:28

were just reported. You know, a

22:30

lot of those are strained out, but they might

22:32

actually be investigated. And in some cases, the parents are

22:34

charged, right? There's problems with

22:36

that in the sense that even

22:38

if you're investigated and you

22:40

ultimately are not convicted or something.

22:43

Those investigations are really tough

22:45

and scary for parents,

22:47

right? It's a frightening

22:49

thing to, you know, have

22:52

the threat of your child being

22:54

taken away sort of looming over you.

22:56

You know, you're in a very

22:58

vulnerable position. And then on top of

23:00

that, I do think that it

23:02

has sort of a chilling effect on

23:04

parents' abilities to kind of make

23:06

decisions that they think are reasonable. It's

23:08

very hard for them to sort

23:10

of manage the inherent

23:12

risks of parenthood in

23:14

a sensible way without kind

23:16

of worrying about this,

23:19

you know, this threat of

23:21

investigation or even, you

23:23

know, legal action. Yeah.

23:25

And where I think I'm

23:27

hung up is, is the balance

23:29

here? I mean, because I

23:31

feel like we should want people

23:34

to speak up if they see something concerning.

23:36

I mean, the people who go into

23:38

a hotel room, I think there was one

23:40

case where I think it was housekeeping

23:42

came into a hotel room and she just

23:44

comes upon these kids that are sleeping

23:46

and there's no adults, there's no supervision there.

23:48

I mean, I feel like

23:51

in the event that there

23:53

isn't parents watching on a monitor

23:55

or that there is something

23:57

wrong here, that we want people

23:59

to speak up and something

24:01

when they see something concerning. I

24:03

think that's a good point. I guess

24:05

where I would be a

24:07

little bit concerned is the

24:09

sort of defaulting to, well,

24:12

let's report them to the

24:14

authorities, right? You know, because I

24:16

do think that that is, in

24:20

some ways, we've created this

24:22

sort of frictionless approach to

24:24

dealing with, hmm, I'm

24:26

concerned for these kids. What do I

24:28

do? Maybe in a world without

24:30

that, How would you express your concern?

24:32

Well, you'd probably go look for

24:34

the parents, you'd tell the hotel management,

24:36

right? You would probably have to

24:38

sort of have maybe some more uncomfortable

24:40

conversations, but it would probably more

24:42

directly involve the parents themselves and really

24:45

getting to the bottom of the

24:47

situation. I think the sense that I

24:49

got from a lot of, you

24:51

know, CPS, like experts, people who are

24:53

studying this, and to be clear,

24:55

there are a lot of people who

24:57

are concerned about how

24:59

pervasive these investigations have gotten, right?

25:01

Their sense is that the

25:03

now standard approach is for people

25:05

to sort of take this

25:08

like when in doubt, reported type

25:10

of approach that kind of

25:12

skips over any kind of interpersonal

25:14

investigation like, okay, is this

25:16

something that I really need to

25:18

report? Are the kids okay,

25:20

right? And is this something that

25:22

really warrants legal action? There's

25:24

sort of this defaulting to, well,

25:27

you know what? I'll just

25:29

tell the authorities and then they

25:31

can sort it out, right?

25:33

Without people quite realizing what sort

25:35

of costs even, even a

25:37

simple investigation might inflict on the

25:39

parents and the family involved. Well,

25:42

especially because a lot of this

25:44

is just so case by case basis.

25:46

Like as we pointed out at

25:48

the beginning with the Howard family, like

25:51

we have no idea how far

25:53

away. they were from their kids. They

25:55

were clearly close enough that they

25:57

were able to get a Wi -Fi

25:59

connection of some flavor. And in some

26:01

cases, if you leave your hotel

26:03

and go down for a drink, I

26:05

mean, that's basically like leaving a

26:07

house in the suburbs. If your kids

26:09

are on the second story and

26:11

you go in the backyard, there

26:14

is no way of

26:16

actually setting very specific parameters

26:18

because you have so

26:20

many variables, not to mention

26:22

the age and behavior of

26:24

the kids. And

26:26

so I guess what is

26:28

the middle ground of parents

26:30

aren't allowed to have fun

26:32

and you need to have

26:34

your child in sight at

26:36

literally every second? I

26:39

think you've hit on something

26:41

that is central to this whole

26:43

discussion, which is that that

26:45

Yes, it's actually not possible. Like,

26:47

there are people who are

26:49

sort of fighting to make the

26:51

laws surrounding child abuse and

26:54

neglect, particularly child neglect, more specific

26:56

so that parents have a

26:58

better understanding of what is actually

27:00

going to get them in

27:02

trouble. And, you know, when should

27:04

I actually, if I'm a

27:06

bystander, when should I actually report

27:08

this, right? But even in

27:11

the most specific of those, proposed

27:13

statutes, you can't really get

27:15

that specific because ultimately parenting

27:17

and then all the risk

27:19

management that you do as

27:21

a parent is, you

27:23

can't really make broad -based rules for

27:26

it. It's very situation -specific inherently so,

27:28

right? I say in this piece that

27:30

I've done this with my kids

27:32

many times, but there are With

27:34

other kids, would I necessarily make the

27:36

same call? I can imagine plenty of

27:38

scenarios where, you know, maybe this baby

27:40

that I'm about to have has, you

27:42

know, is, you know, is prone to

27:44

having seizures or something like that, right?

27:47

Or they have some, their personality is

27:49

just sort of different. Maybe they're very

27:51

wakeful. Maybe they, you know, lots of

27:53

different scenarios. Maybe they just get up

27:55

and walk around a lot. Exactly. They

27:57

don't sleep well, right? You know, one

27:59

of the reasons that I always felt

28:01

so confident about this is that I

28:03

just knew my kids sleep patterns, and

28:05

once they were kind of out, they

28:07

were out for a chunk of time,

28:09

right? So I just kind of knew

28:11

that about them. If that was not

28:13

the case, I might make a very,

28:15

very different set of decisions, right? And

28:17

that's not possible to sort of inscribe

28:19

those judgment calls into law. By the

28:21

very same token, those decisions, a lot

28:23

of bystanders simply don't have the information

28:26

that they need in order to to

28:28

actually judge whether or not you have

28:30

made a sensible decision, right? So I

28:32

guess where I would say, where I

28:34

would like the middle ground to go,

28:36

like where I think we'll find more

28:38

middle ground, is that like acknowledging that,

28:40

yes, I love that people are sort

28:42

of concerned for kids, right? But

28:44

if there was a bit more

28:46

humility in sort of assessing parents'

28:49

decisions and sort of thinking, hey,

28:52

Do I actually have, is this

28:54

something that we can, that we

28:56

can judge based on some sort

28:59

of like broad blanket rule that

29:01

you never leave a child alone?

29:03

Probably not. Do I have the

29:05

actual information to assess whether something

29:07

negligent has happened here? Probably not

29:09

or maybe not, right? Maybe I

29:12

should look into it a little

29:14

bit more before I default to,

29:16

hey, I'm going to report you

29:18

to the police. Stephanie

29:24

Murray, thanks for chatting with me

29:26

about this. Yeah, thank you for having

29:29

me. It's been fun. Stephanie

29:31

Murray is a contributing writer at

29:34

The Atlantic. She also runs the newsletter,

29:36

Family Stuff. And that is it

29:38

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29:40

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29:42

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30:08

Shayna Roth in for Lizzie 'Leary.

30:10

Thanks for listening.