Bad Parent: Out of Sight
Why we don't use a baby monitor.
by Elizabeth Blackwell
December 30, 2008
A few years ago, I checked in with a friend who'd been having a tough time with her high-maintenance newborn. "I don't even eat until after my husband comes home," I remember her moaning. "Whenever I put the baby down to fix something, he cries."
In deference to her hormonal hysteria, I refrained from sharing my immediate reaction: So?
As a new mom, I regularly left my daughter to shriek in her bouncy seat while I scarfed down my lunch or took a shower. Occasional neglect seemed like a relatively minor maternal sin, especially since it was the only way I got anything done around the house. Wasn't it in my daughter's best interest to ensure our toilets weren't condemned by the Health Department?
I developed a habit of lolling around bed in the morning, not responding to my daughter's cries down the hall until they progressed from gentle mewling to outright fury. And in that spirit, I refused to buy a baby monitor.
These days, it seems, there's no such thing as an off-duty parent.
Even when your children are sleeping, you must remain tethered to them by an electronic gadget.
Even when your children are sleeping, you must remain tethered to them by an electronic gadget, one of those modern-parenting must-haves that our own parents somehow survived without.
Initially, my husband and I assumed we'd buy a monitor; that we didn't have one by the time Clara came home from the hospital was a result of disorganization more than anything else. (We were the parents who neglected to pack a "going home" outfit for our newborn and stared in stunned horror at the nurse when we were being discharged, terrified we'd be sent out the door with a naked baby.)
As the months passed, we realized we didn't miss having a monitor, and we remained monitor-less even after twin boys arrived a few years later. We live in a two-story, 1950s suburban house. When there's a real emergency in the kids' rooms upstairs (e.g. someone's chubby leg jammed in between the crib rails), the screaming carries to our family room downstairs and we head up to investigate. What we can't hear is every little whimper and wail, those distracting sounds that can send your heart thumping in she's-not-sleeping-yet-please-God-go-to-sleep panic.
©2008 Elizabeth Blackwell and Babble
About the Author
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Elizabeth Blackwell is a freelance magazine writer and the author of Frommer's Chicago guidebook. She lives in the Chicago suburbs with her husband, three children and a vast collection of long underwear.
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