cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/69844421
No one warned me, when I became a parent, about all the apps that would colonize my phone: the app for the baby monitor where I could gaze at my daughter, even when my husband and I finally had a night out. The app for the Snoo smart bassinet we rented in bleary-eyed desperation, which logged her sleep by the minute. The app where I logged her sleep manually because the Snoo was not accurate enough. And still, I remember thinking that I had been quite restrained. I mean, I didn’t buy the $299 Owlet smart sock, which would send her pulse rate and oxygen saturation directly to my phone, or the $290 Nanit monitor, which would track her every breath.
Or you could not buy all that shit
You are of course right, but the fear of missing an important detail about your newborn that could prevent their death in those first 6 months is quite real for first time parents. And this industry unfortunately caters to that. Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) is the specter that looms over you during those months.
We have kids and it’s borderline criminal how everyone feeds on the fear of young parents. Your kid might have down syndrome! It might have an incurable heart issue! It might be left handed! It might suffocate and die!
It wasn’t all sunshine, we had some shitty situations. But still, why not trust in biology and basic health care and the fact that billions of kids grew up just fine?
Wouldn’t a real person be better to do all that though
Especially considering that the child is a human
The real human persons need to sleep sometimes too and we did away with the village
Cavemen figured it out.
This is a ridiculous response to that statement. Of course babies have survived for the entirety of human history.
But not all babies.
And telling a parent not to worry about SIDS because most kids are fine, and the rest are just a statistic isn’t going to assuage the fear that these companies prey on.
We care that the body survives even if the soul has to die to accomplish it.
Helicoptering your child does terrible lasting damage to their psyche.
Preaching to the choir man, I think all advertising should be banned. They have teams of scientists dedicated to learning how to best psychologically manipulate people into buying shit they don’t need, lol.