The great internet Baby Monitor Debate
(You can probably guess our take on this)
Slate just dropped a firestorm of an article this week about parents using baby monitors to watch their sleeping children while they sneak away to hotel restaurants. The piece describes how an influencer couple faced intense backlash for using FaceTime to check on their sleeping children in a cruise ship cabin while they dined elsewhere on board. The article ignited a viral frenzy—over 1.4K comments, heated threads across X, and a digital mob that quickly formed to weigh in on whether this was practical parenting or reckless neglect.
IMO there are no excuses. If parents can't afford to hire sitters, take them along or stay at home.
- Crazy person on the internet
We at Live Near Friends believe that not only is this behavior totally unremarkable and fine, it’s also something parents shouldn’t have to reserve only for vacations. They can design it into their every day life by living next door to a friend or family member (who can watch the baby monitor for you).
Is it safe?
First, on the safety question: having a friend next door watch your baby on the monitor is not any riskier than many other activities we routinely accept in parenting, like driving in a car or crossing a street. It’s not even that different from using a monitor to listen to your child in a house where their bedroom is out of earshot—which is, of course, the whole point of baby monitors.
The difference, of course, is that parents who leave a baby in to go out to dinner are doing it for the sake of fun. That doesn’t make it any less safe, but it does reveal an apparent skepticism of the idea that parents are entitled to enjoyment. Does fun end at parenthood?
Is it good to leave your kids?
The dismissal of these benefits as selfish compared to the pursuit of maximum safety reveals more about our culture’s unrealistic parenting expectations than it does about anyone’s parenting judgment.
It’s a good thing when parents have opportunities to do fun things without their kids, both for individual parents and for society at large (the expectation that all fun and enjoyment should end when you have kids is probably part of the reason for our growing demographic crisis).
Do yourself a favor: Live baby monitor distance from a friend
Here’s where our perspective diverges from the many hot takes circulating online: leaving your sleeping kid with a baby monitor shouldn't be reserved for special occasions like vacations. It should be a mundane part of everyday life. And when you live near friends, it can be.
Instead of hiring a babysitter, toss the baby monitor to your friend on the way out the door. You can continue enjoying impromptu evenings out like you did before having kids. All your friend has to do is carry around a device in their own home, doing whatever they might have been doing anyway. If the baby wakes up, they can be over in two minutes.
The parenting benefits of living near friends go way beyond the ability to go out to a child-free dinner every now and then. Families who live next door to each other can more easily share meals, hand-me-downs, childcare, and carpools. The kids are happy to have other kids around to play with. The adults are happy to enjoy uninterrupted conversation while their kids are entertained by each other. And they get to avoid the epidemic levels of isolation and loneliness that have become the norm for many modern parents.
So … no, we do not think it is a big deal to leave your sleeping child in a hotel room with a baby monitor while you visit a restaurant downstairs. Parental happiness has become a scarce resource. The ability to enjoy adult time away from children is a societal good that should be abundant and readily available.
The easiest way to increase the supply of this good—and many related ones—is to start prioritizing living within "baby monitor distance" of friends or family.
