A popular married couple on TikTok, Matt and Abby Howard, known for their hot takes on their podcast, The Unplanned Podcast, landed in some hot water after the internet assumed the couple had left their one and two-year-old alone in a stateroom while on a cruise.
Now, the couple is defending themselves against a whole lot of backlash, explaining that this was all just a big misunderstanding.
Last week, the podcast co-hosts brought their sons Griffin, 2, and August, 1, on a family cruise. The couple documented parts of their experience on social media. In a since-deleted Instagram Story, Abby shared how she and Matt went to dinner without their boys and used FaceTime to monitor them in the room.
“So we ended up taking them for 5 nights and it became apparent that they weren’t enjoying it and therefore we weren’t either,” the viral mom wrote on Instagram, speaking of the cruise’s daycare.
“So THEN we switched our dinner time to AFTER their bedtime and FaceTimed the monitors while we ate.”
Abby also noted how their baby monitors “don’t work on board” the cruise ship “unless you’re only like 10 feet away.” Referring to their dinnertime solution, she added, “And that worked out muchhhh better for everyone.”
Social media users quickly responded to the Howards’ decision to leave their sons unattended on the ship, making videos detailing safety concerns about the situation. Some even claimed that if this incident had happened on U.S. soil, they’d be investigated by Child Protective Services.
After the original story gained traction, Matt and Abby released a video, denying the claims against them.
“There is information circulating about us that is completely untrue,” Matt begins. “So we just wanted to set the record straight, clear the air, because we take our work as parents extremely seriously. And we love our children more than anything in the entire world. And we’re very protective of our kids.”
Matt explains that he and Abby just returned from a seven-night cruise with Abby’s extended family, including grandparents, and Abby posted an Instagram story, while at dinner without the kids, showing a photograph of her dinnerplate alongside her phone.
She noted she was “facetiming” the baby monitors while the kids slept. She did not note that any adult was actually there with the kids.
“People started to speculate and believe that we had left our children alone in their state rooms. And that is just completely untrue, because we had someone with our children at all times on this boat, period,” Matt claims.
Abby chimes in, noting that she gets how her “story did lead to misunderstanding,” noting that’s why she deleted the original post.
“And I do want to say thank you so much to those of you that were concerned about the safety and well-being of our children as their parents. And this is our first and foremost main concern, but to know that other people share those same concerns for our precious boys, it really means a lot. So thank you,” she said before denying the claims against them.
“But I do want to clarify that we have not, would not, will not ever leave our children unattended. We would never, ever want to put them in harm’s way in any way,” she said.
Abby goes on to explain that her kids sleep in “blackout tents every single night” and in those tents, there is a spot for a sound machine and a baby monitor. She and Matt always turn on the monitors, even when they are in the same places the kids.
This seems pretty normal to me. My daughter is five, and I still check her monitor every once in a while to see how she’s doing.
“We just love to have eyes on them. We’re always concerned about them. And so that’s why even when we would, you know, tag team and take turns at family dinner, we would turn on FaceTime so we could also have eyes on them as their parents. And we weren’t the ones, you know, attending them in that moment, and we’re so thankful to them … because we spent a lot of our time on this boat in our state rooms, manning the baby monitors,” Abby said.
Matt ends the video, thanking Abby’s extended family again for helping pitch in with child care during the cruise.
The comments from TikTok users were overwhelmingly supportive with many noting that they knew there had to be more to the story because there is just no way that two parents, with tons of extended family, would ever leave a baby and a toddler alone in a cruise ship hotel room, right?
Others on TikTok were not quite as convinced…
“It’s sooo like not even believable at all,” one user wrote.
“They’re covering themselves. You don’t FaceTime your monitor if someone else is in the room…you FaceTime them!” another noted.
“why mention ‘waiting till the kids go to bed before going to dinner’ at all if there was someone watching the kids?” another questioned.
Are these two telling the truth or does something still seem a little fishy? There’s likely no way to know.
