The Baby Monitor: A Relatively Modern “Necessity”
Before I began conducting interviews for this book, I researched parental attitudes toward baby monitors on the consumer advice website Epinions. com. Although baby monitors have only appeared on the scene relatively recently, parental use of these devices is now assumed rather than explained in consumer reviews.1 That is, reviewers do not appear to think that they need to account for why they want or need a baby monitor, indicating that they do not view their actions as being either “unanticipated or untoward.”1 Instead, they dive right in with a discussion of the benefits—and drawbacks—of the particular monitor they are evaluating. For example, a reviewer on Epin- ions. com said, “[This monitor] was a mothers dream. This is the monitor I wanted. … I researched them, spent hours in the baby stores, etc. I registered for this monitor, and received it.” A casual reader of these reviews would thus learn that monitors are expected equipment: the central question is not whether to buy one but rather which one to buy. In fact, among the one hundred reviews I examined, only one parent said that on the advice of her pediatrician she had chosen to forgo this device; she suggested that parents might be better off if they remained somewhat less aware of what, precisely, a baby was doing:
I registered and received the [monitor] for a shower gift when I was pregnant with my first child. I thought this would be something we couldn’t do without but found out differently. … If your baby doesn’t sleep very well, our pediatrician tells you to put the monitor away because you jump at every noise you hear or you get them up when perhaps they might comfort themselves back to sleep.3
When I interviewed parents in person for this book, I anticipated that I would find more of this type of questioning of the utility of having a baby monitor.4 But again, among almost a hundred respondents across all socio-
economic classes, only one parent—the mother of triplets—indicated that she did not want to use a baby monitor because it would make her too aware of her infants’ needs: “[I] didn’t use [a baby monitor]. . . . They were loud criers, why would I? And once they were screaming [I could hear them]. I didn’t want to know when they were awake.” The remaining parents who chose not to use a monitor—and this was true of parents from the full range of socioeconomic positions—said it was because they lived in such small apartments or homes that a monitor was totally unnecessary.5