I Spied on My Husband to Make Sure He Was Taking Care of Our Baby. What I Saw Shook Me to My Core.

Advice by Jamilah Lemieux

A couple weeks ago, I saw a video on YouTube of a wife who decided to test how vigilant her husband was while out with their very young baby by secretly following him. She managed to not only “kidnap” her baby from his carriage while her husband played on his phone, but the husband only learned of it when she confronted him with the baby in her arms. My husband, “Eric” and I have a son who is a little over three months old, and the video inspired me to try the same thing with him. I thought he would never allow such a thing to happen. I was wrong.

Unbeknownst to my husband, I followed him to the park with a friend in her car where he was pushing our 3-month-old in his carriage. He stopped and sat on a park bench where a couple of women were doing yoga nearby. Eric pulled out his phone and began recording them, during which time I was able to sneak up while his back was turned and swap out a teddy bear for our son and move out of sight with him. After about 15 minutes, he put away his phone and pushed the carriage back to his car. He didn’t even bother to check on the baby! It was only when he went to take our son out of the carriage that he realized he was gone. He started to panic when I emerged from behind the tree where I had been hiding and asked if he was looking for someone. Eric at first apologized, then got angry at me for “scaring the shit out of him”.

All this time, I thought my husband was an attentive father. Now I don’t feel safe with him taking our son anywhere on his own anymore. Eric claims he’ll never let anything like this happen again. Does he deserve another chance, or should I make sure I’m with the baby from now on when it comes to outings?

—Sense of Security Shattered

https://slate.com/advice/2025/08/parenting-advice-spying-on-daddy.html