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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

4:07

judgment lobbed at the Howard's, it

4:09

was based on very little

4:11

information. It's hard to know,

4:13

okay, how dangerous was this situation? In

4:15

reality, we don't know, we don't

4:17

know how far away they were. Maybe

4:19

they were fully, you know, a mile

4:21

away on a giant. cruise ship

4:23

and maybe that would make some people

4:25

uncomfortable maybe I would even not

4:27

do that right but like we don't

4:29

really know and it seemed like a

4:31

It seemed like it could be

4:33

a plausibly safe Set up to me

4:35

as someone who had done this

4:37

many times before What

4:41

we do know is that the Howard's

4:43

had a baby monitor set up to watch

4:45

their children, using the technology in the

4:47

way 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

5:12

parent. I'm Shayna Roth,

5:14

filling in for Lizzie O 'Leary, and

5:16

you're listening to What Next TBD, a

5:18

show about technology, power, and how

5:20

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5:22

around. This

5:38

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ARM and NPM wherever you

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get your podcasts. I

7:03

want to take a look back

7:05

at American history and sort of open

7:07

our history books here for a

7:09

second. Specifically, how we have historically monitored

7:11

our babies, toddlers, children. Let's

7:13

say a hundred years ago, how common

7:15

was it for parents to be

7:17

monitoring their babies constantly? It's

7:20

kind of tricky to sort out I actually

7:22

wasn't sure about this when I first started looking

7:24

into it because I think we all kind

7:26

of know that yeah You know six year old

7:28

seven year olds eight year olds right like

7:30

a long time ago They had a much more

7:32

free -range childhood and where it had more independence

7:34

But I actually wasn't sure about babies right

7:36

like what did we do with babies a hundred

7:39

years ago? and what

7:41

I learned was that

7:43

Generally speaking really hyper

7:45

-vigilant supervision of babies was

7:47

something that was pretty much

7:49

exclusive, that only possible for

7:51

wealthy mothers who had the

7:53

ability to sort of outsource

7:55

a lot of that child

7:57

care. They could hire nannies,

8:00

they could hire other people

8:02

so that a baby was

8:04

really closely monitored at all

8:06

times for basically everyone else. that

8:08

was just not practical right so

8:10

they you know if you were

8:13

working on a farm or you

8:15

were an enslaved woman right you

8:17

you generally left babies often in

8:19

the care of older children or

8:21

you know if you were working

8:23

in a factory you'd leave your

8:25

your child with an older woman

8:27

in a tenement who's watching several

8:30

babies at the same time so

8:32

Janet Golden, this historian of childhood

8:34

that I spoke to pretty much

8:36

was like, yeah, you didn't supervise

8:38

babies all the time. That wasn't

8:40

a thing back then, for most

8:42

people. At what point did it

8:44

become more common for parents to

8:47

be able to monitor their children?

8:49

It seems like the inflection point was really

8:51

in the post -World War II era. That was

8:53

when you saw sort of this growth of

8:55

the middle class, so, you know, rising

8:58

affluence in...

9:01

meant that more people had the

9:03

resources to kind of more

9:05

closely monitor their kids, you know.

9:08

And then there was other things

9:10

that sort of went along

9:12

with that, some of it being

9:14

this sort of proliferation of

9:17

parenting advice columns and expert advice,

9:19

right? More people sort of

9:21

sharing their thoughts about how you

9:23

should raise your kids, right?

9:25

And then I think there's also

9:27

a technological component to it.

9:30

advancing technology, I think, in a

9:32

variety of ways, kind of

9:34

raised the standards of what would

9:36

be considered adequate supervision. Yeah,

9:38

and thinking about that technology, I mean,

9:40

one of the key ways in which

9:43

parents became able to closely monitor their

9:45

child was through the baby monitor. When

9:48

did parents start using those

9:50

regularly? They really didn't

9:52

become broadly available, and by

9:54

that I mean... Relatively inexpensive such

9:56

that that you know, maybe

9:58

the median parent in America could

10:00

could get one until you

10:03

see them emerge on the market

10:05

In like the 1980s and

10:07

the video monitored ones, you know

10:09

in the 1990s they were

10:11

still fairly expensive then but as

10:13

they emerge then pretty quickly

10:15

cheaper models start showing up so

10:17

I would say like probably

10:20

the 1990s early 2000s where you

10:22

start to see like, okay,

10:24

now it's getting the point where

10:26

kind of this is within

10:28

reach for basically everybody or for

10:30

a lot of people. I'm

10:33

curious about the marketing. You

10:35

know, you have this new technology

10:37

where basically they're saying, hey, you

10:39

can watch your baby all the

10:41

time. Was that appealing to people

10:43

in its inception? And was that

10:46

how it was marketed to parents?

10:48

When I spoke to a researcher

10:50

named Alex Perry, who studies the

10:52

history of public health, he said

10:54

that basically from the beginning, the

10:57

way that baby monitors were

10:59

marketed was as offering sort of

11:01

rest, right? That you could

11:03

step away from your child. You don't need

11:05

to be hovering near them and also sort of

11:07

peace of mind. You know they're safe. You

11:09

can step away and you're OK. But

11:12

then also almost

11:14

immediately after these things

11:16

become fairly widespread, then

11:19

people were questioning that and

11:21

sort of realizing like, oh, wait,

11:23

is it offering peace of

11:25

mind or is it heightening anxiety

11:28

about, is my baby okay?

11:30

Yeah, let's dig into that anxiety because

11:32

a theme that crops up a lot

11:35

in your piece is the idea that

11:37

technology promises us this convenience. As you

11:39

said, this peace of mind, but it

11:41

brings about a whole new set of

11:43

anxieties. What were the anxieties that came

11:45

about with the baby monitor that maybe

11:47

weren't there when women or families were

11:49

able to just sort of like, well,

11:52

going to put the baby in the

11:54

crib for a couple hours and go

11:56

do my work? The first level

11:58

is just sort of as these things

12:00

became available, they were steadily

12:02

viewed as essential, right? So the

12:04

notion of not having eyes on

12:06

your baby at all times suddenly

12:08

became bad, which to be clear

12:10

as we said before was very

12:12

normal before you didn't have your

12:14

eyes on your baby all the

12:16

time before so now we've got

12:18

the technology and yes okay now

12:21

i need to know what my

12:23

baby is doing at all times

12:25

right but then i also think

12:27

that it um with that information

12:29

it can sort of generate new

12:31

anxieties Partially just through the

12:33

actual technology itself, especially early monitors,

12:35

they had cords and there was

12:37

some concern that people wanted the

12:39

baby monitor to be as close

12:41

as possible to the baby because

12:44

they wanted to be able to

12:46

hear every breath and make sure

12:48

that they were breathing. But

12:51

then that also meant that,

12:53

okay, well, if the baby

12:55

grabs the monitor, they could

12:57

get strangled. Or

12:59

maybe, you know, maybe the monitor

13:01

will set on fire or something like

13:03

that, right? So it's sort of

13:05

brought about actual literal concerns just based

13:07

on the technology itself, right? And

13:10

then also, it's sort

13:12

of like, if you,

13:15

I think before, if you

13:17

didn't have the monitor sort

13:20

of trained on this baby at all

13:22

times, you were kind of just assuming that

13:24

they were continuing to breathe, right? And

13:26

you were kind of just, you weren't really

13:28

worrying about what different sounds made because

13:30

you probably couldn't hear them unless the sound

13:33

was pretty loud. But now you can

13:35

literally hear and see everything that your baby

13:37

is doing. And so then that means

13:39

that, oh, oh, they kind of like, wait.

13:41

Are they breathing? Are they still breathing?

13:43

You know, like, I can't quite hear it

13:45

on the monitor, right? Or, you

13:47

know, uh -oh, they made some sort of sound

13:50

here. You would have, you know, 100 years ago, you

13:52

wouldn't have heard that sound. I wouldn't have been concerned about

13:54

it. But now you can hear the sound, so you're

13:56

going, what's that mean? When

14:00

we come back, how technology

14:02

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14:04

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to this show. See terms

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at discover.com/credit card. One thing we've

16:59

seen over time is that with

17:01

new technology comes new expectations

17:03

about how we live. Think

17:05

of the invention of the washing machine.

17:08

Before it, washing your clothes was

17:10

backbreaking labor that would take

17:12

all day. You needed to make

17:14

your own soap, individually scrub each piece

17:16

of clothing and then hang them to

17:18

dry. Stephanie talked with

17:20

historians who told her the expectation

17:22

was that you washed your clothes

17:25

by the season. Then,

17:27

the washing machine was invented. And

17:29

now, the expectation is we wash

17:32

our clothes whenever they get dirty. Stephanie

17:34

sees similarities in how

17:36

technology shifted our expectations

17:39

on parenting. Baby

17:41

scales are another example of that.

17:43

You know, people, um, that

17:45

was, I think Janet Golden, the

17:47

historian, told me that was sort of

17:49

like the first... good example

17:51

of like a baby specific

17:53

technology that really ramped up

17:55

expectations and in some ways

17:57

anxieties because before you didn't,

17:59

you know, people started, they

18:01

would literally bring their babies to the

18:03

butcher to be weighed and they would

18:05

do that maybe once a month, right?

18:07

But then once it became possible for

18:09

everybody to have, or pretty much everybody

18:11

to have a scale in their home,

18:13

then everybody's weighing their baby every single

18:16

day and they're, you know, if

18:18

you gain Announce,

18:20

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

18:22

for celebration and you lose an ounce. Oh

18:24

my gosh, we're gonna call the doctor that

18:26

sort of thing, right? I think

18:28

the same a similar kind of

18:31

pattern has happened with with baby monitors,

18:33

right? You just now that we

18:35

have the technology that allows us to

18:37

supervise babies at all times and

18:39

know exactly what's happening with them, what

18:41

sounds they're making, whether they're breathing,

18:43

etc, etc. The expectation is that

18:45

you have eyes on your kids

18:47

at all times. And with

18:50

new expectations comes new judgments

18:52

on how to properly raise

18:54

your child. In her piece,

18:56

Stephanie talks about a study

18:58

from the University of California

19:00

Irvine from 2016. That

19:02

study asked participants to assess the

19:04

risk of a child that

19:06

was left unsupervised by their parents

19:08

for a short period of

19:11

time. The study offered a

19:13

few different reasons for why the parent

19:15

was leaving their child behind. in

19:17

one example, the parent is returning

19:19

a library book and gets, you know,

19:21

hit by a car and then

19:24

is knocked unconscious for 15 minutes, right?

19:26

Or in another one, they're running

19:28

into the library to pick up a

19:30

paycheck. Or in another

19:32

one, they're, you know, they're going behind the

19:34

library to meet their lover, you know? I don't

19:36

know why you would go behind the library

19:38

to meet your lover, but whatever. Right,

19:41

so they wanted to see,

19:43

okay, how does... you ask people,

19:45

okay, how much danger is

19:47

that child in for that 15

19:49

minute period or whatever it

19:51

is, you know, does their assessment

19:53

of risk vary based on

19:55

the reason for the parent being

19:57

gone? It shouldn't, right?

19:59

It really shouldn't. You know, if

20:02

the parent is gone for 15 minutes and the kid

20:04

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

20:06

risk should be the same regardless

20:08

of why the parent is gone.

20:11

But that's not what people said

20:13

in pretty much everybody was like,

20:15

yeah, the kid who has been

20:17

left alone for 15 minutes intentionally

20:19

by the parent, especially for sort

20:21

of this nefarious reason of meeting

20:23

a lover, right, is

20:25

in more danger than a

20:27

child whose parent has been

20:29

knocked unconscious, you know, unwillingly

20:32

by a car, which I

20:34

think speaks to, well, the

20:36

sort of the way that

20:38

our like moral intuitions cloud

20:40

our ability to assess risk

20:42

in a consistent way. And

20:44

it feels like a lot

20:47

of our neuroses and anxieties,

20:49

at least today, come

20:51

in part from judgment, the

20:53

fear of judgment by others, either

20:55

online or just like strangers. I mean,

20:57

you pointed out that parents have

21:00

been arrested and gotten an actual legal

21:02

trouble for leaving their children in

21:04

hotel rooms or in state rooms on

21:06

cruise ships. I mean, America in

21:08

particular, I think, a pretty

21:10

robust system for policing parents in

21:12

the sense that we make

21:15

it very easy, right? We require

21:17

states to sort of operate

21:19

these hotlines that allow anybody to

21:21

report suspected child abuse or

21:23

neglect. And, you know, okay, that

21:25

seems good. I want people

21:27

to be able to report child

21:29

abuse and neglect, right? But

21:31

it does mean that we have

21:33

a very This is sort

21:35

of actually another example of technology,

21:37

right? Anybody can call this

21:39

hotline, right? And it's very easy.

21:41

We all have smartphones, right?

21:44

You see a kid walking alone

21:46

on the street. Well, pull

21:48

out your smartphone. You can call

21:50

this hotline and and take

21:52

this kind of like better safe

21:54

than sorry approach to suspected

21:56

child abuse and neglect, right? So

21:58

what where that has led us

22:01

in America is that we have

22:03

a very high rate of of

22:05

children being reported

22:07

or actually investigated for suspected child

22:09

abuse and neglect, about a

22:11

third of kids will come into

22:13

contact with the CPS system

22:15

in some way, whether because they

22:17

were just reported, you know,

22:19

a lot of those are strained out, but they might

22:21

actually be investigated. And in some cases, the parents

22:23

are charged, right? There's problems with

22:26

that in the sense that even

22:28

if you're investigated and you ultimately

22:30

are not, you know, convicted or

22:32

something. those investigations are

22:34

really tough and scary

22:36

for parents, right? It's a

22:38

frightening thing to, you

22:40

know, have the threat of

22:42

your child being taken away sort

22:44

of looming over you. You know, you're

22:46

in a very vulnerable position. And

22:48

then on top of that, I do

22:50

think that it has sort of

22:53

a chilling effect on parents' abilities to

22:55

kind of make decisions that they

22:57

think are reasonable. It's very hard for

22:59

them to sort of manage the

23:01

inherent risks of parenthood in

23:04

a sensible way without kind

23:06

of worrying about this You

23:08

know this threat of investigation

23:10

or even you know legal

23:12

action Yeah, and where

23:14

I think I'm hung up

23:17

is is the balance here

23:19

I mean because I feel

23:21

like we should want people

23:24

to speak up if they see something concerning.

23:26

I mean, the people who go into

23:28

a hotel room, I think there was one

23:30

case where I think it was housekeeping

23:32

came into a hotel room and she just

23:34

comes upon these kids that are sleeping

23:36

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

23:38

I mean, I feel like

23:40

in the event that there isn't

23:43

parents watching on a monitor or

23:45

that there is something wrong here,

23:47

that we want people to speak

23:49

up and say something when they

23:51

see something concerning. I

23:53

think that's a good point. I

23:55

guess where I would be

23:58

a little bit concerned is the

24:00

sort defaulting to, well,

24:02

let's report them to the

24:04

authorities, right? You know, because I

24:06

do think that that is, in

24:09

some ways, we've created this

24:12

sort of frictionless approach to

24:14

dealing with, hmm, I'm

24:16

concerned for these kids. What do I

24:18

do? Maybe in a world without

24:20

that, How would you express your concern?

24:22

Well, you'd probably go look for

24:24

the parents, you'd tell the hotel management,

24:26

right? You would probably have to

24:28

sort of have maybe some more uncomfortable

24:30

conversations, but it would probably more

24:32

directly involve the parents themselves and really

24:34

getting to the bottom of the

24:36

situation. I think the sense that I

24:39

got from a lot of, you

24:41

know, CPS, like experts, people who are

24:43

studying this, and to be clear,

24:45

there are a lot of people who

24:47

are concerned about how

24:49

pervasive these investigations have gotten,

24:51

right? Their sense is that the

24:53

now standard approach is for

24:55

people to sort of take this,

24:57

like, when in doubt, reported

24:59

type of approach that kind of

25:02

skips over any kind of

25:04

interpersonal investigation, like, okay, is this

25:06

something that I really need

25:08

to report? Are the kids okay,

25:10

right? And is this something

25:12

that really warrants legal action? There's

25:14

sort of this defaulting to,

25:16

well, you know what? I'll just

25:19

tell the authorities and then

25:21

they can sort it out, right?

25:23

Without people quite realizing what

25:25

sort of costs even, even a

25:27

simple investigation might inflict on

25:29

the parents and the family involved.

25:32

Well, especially because a lot of

25:34

this is just so case by

25:36

case basis. Like as we pointed

25:39

out at the beginning with the

25:41

Howard family, like we have no

25:43

idea how far away they were

25:45

from their kids. They were clearly

25:47

close enough that they were able

25:49

to get a Wi -Fi connection of

25:51

some flavor. And in some cases,

25:53

if you leave your hotel and

25:55

go down for a drink, I

25:57

mean, that's basically like leaving a

25:59

house in the suburbs. If your

26:01

kids are on the second story

26:03

and you go in the backyard,

26:06

there is no way of actually

26:08

setting very specific parameters because you

26:10

have so many variables, not to

26:12

mention the age and behavior of

26:14

the kids. And

26:16

so I guess what is

26:18

the middle ground of parents

26:20

aren't allowed to have fun

26:22

and you need to have

26:24

your child in sight at

26:26

literally every second? I

26:29

think you've hit on something

26:31

that is central to this

26:33

whole discussion, which is that

26:35

yes, it's actually not possible.

26:37

Like there are people who

26:39

are sort of fighting to

26:41

make the laws surrounding child

26:43

abuse and neglect. um, particularly

26:45

child neglect, uh, more specific

26:48

so that people, uh,

26:50

parents have a better understanding of what

26:52

is actually going to get them in trouble.

26:54

And, you know, when should I actually,

26:56

if I'm a bystander, when should I actually

26:58

report this, right? But even

27:00

in the most specific of those, um,

27:03

proposed statutes, you can't really get that

27:05

specific because ultimately parenting and the, and

27:07

then all the risk management that you

27:09

do as a parent is You can't

27:11

really make broad -based rules for it. It's

27:13

very situation -specific inherently so, right? I

27:16

say in this piece that I've done

27:18

this with my kids many times, but

27:20

there are... with other kids, would I

27:22

necessarily make the same call? I can

27:24

imagine plenty of scenarios where, you know,

27:26

maybe this baby that I'm about to

27:28

have has, you know, is, you know,

27:30

is prone to having seizures or something

27:32

like that, right? Or they have some,

27:35

their personality is just sort of different.

27:37

Maybe they're very wakeful. Maybe they, you

27:39

know, lots of different scenarios. Maybe they

27:41

just get up and walk around a

27:43

lot. Exactly. They don't sleep well, right?

27:45

You know, one of the reasons that

27:47

I always felt so confident about this

27:49

is that I just knew my kids

27:51

sleep patterns, and once they were kind

27:54

of out, they were out for a

27:56

chunk of time, right? So, so I

27:58

just kind of knew that about them.

28:00

If that was not the case, I

28:02

might make a very, very different set

28:04

of decisions, right? And that's not possible

28:06

to sort of inscribe those, those judgment

28:08

calls into law. By the very same

28:10

token, those decisions, a lot of bystanders

28:13

simply don't have the information that they

28:15

need in order to to actually judge

28:17

whether or not you have made a

28:19

sensible decision, right? So I guess where

28:21

I would say, where I would like

28:23

the middle ground to go, like where

28:25

I think we'll find more middle ground, is

28:28

that like acknowledging that, yes, I

28:30

love that people are sort of concerned

28:32

for kids, right? But if

28:34

there was a bit more humility

28:37

in sort of assessing parents' decisions

28:39

and sort of thinking, hey,

28:42

Do I actually have, is this

28:44

something that we can judge

28:46

based on some sort of like

28:48

broad blanket rule that you

28:50

never leave a child alone? Probably

28:52

not. Do I have the

28:54

actual information to assess whether something

28:56

negligent has happened here? Probably

28:59

not, or maybe not, right? Maybe

29:01

I should look into it

29:03

a little bit more before I

29:05

default to, hey, I'm going

29:07

to report you to the police.

29:14

Stephanie Murray, thanks for chatting with me

29:16

about this. Yeah, thank you for

29:18

having me. It's been fun. Stephanie

29:21

Murray is a contributing writer at

29:23

The Atlantic. She also runs the newsletter,

29:26

Family Stuff. And that is it

29:28

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29:58

Shayna Roth in for Lizzie O 'Leary.

30:00

Thanks for listening.