Who's Minding the Baby?

Parents everywhere can buy a host of services to help raise their kids, but here in New York, where things normally tend toward excess (for a fee, you can get someone to toilet train your child), parenting follows suit. And New York Magazine follows the shopping passions of New York's parents.

This week they ran a short piece on high-tech ways to help track  babies and their sitters, including:

The Teddy Bear Nanny Cam: A $100 to $450 bear with a pinhole camera inside. If the bear version doesn't do it for you, check out the hidden-in-the-Clorox-bottle cams.

I Saw Your Nanny: Adding to every working mother's paranoia, this site makes Mommy Dearest look like Romper Room. It posts bone-chilling stories about monster nannies.

New York Nanny Cam Company: A home surveillance system by any other name. For $1,200 you can install webcams that stream video to your web site.

Whereismybaby: This site is run by an ex-NYPD captain and a former Army attorney who'll do it all, from installing a GPS on the diaper bag to live surveillance.

I'm not sure how you feel about high-tech baby minding and nanny spying, but it gives me the heebie jeebies. My thought? If you are tempted to keep tabs on your nanny then you should at minimum tell them that's what you plan on doing. If they agree to live under surveillance, well, you probably didn't need the surveillance in the first place.

What do you think? Is high-tech baby minding giving parents peace of mind or destroying all hope of a trusting relationship?