Was Ed Gein A Babysitter? True Crime Myths & Real Childcare Fears

I was standing in my laundry room on Tuesday, elbow-deep in a pile of spit-up stained onesies, when my phone completely melted down with contradictory advice about leaving my kids. My mom called first, full of anxiety, telling me I shouldn't leave the baby with anyone but blood relatives because the world is entirely too sick right now. Ten minutes later, my neighbor texted to say I was overthinking my upcoming date night and should just hire the high school girl down the road because she only charges ten bucks an hour. Then, the absolute kicker—my younger sister, who's way too obsessed with Netflix true crime documentaries, sent me a three-minute voice memo demanding I run an FBI-level background check on anyone who walks through my door because, and I quote, "Did you know Ed Gein used to watch kids?"

I almost dropped a wet towel on the floor. I'm just gonna be real with you, my brain immediately short-circuited. Between running my Etsy shop, keeping three kids under five alive, and trying to remember if I brushed my teeth today, the absolute last thing I needed was the mental image of a 1950s serial killer hanging out with a baby. But because I'm a glutton for punishment, and because the idea wouldn't leave my head, I went down the rabbit hole during nap time to find out if there was any truth to the rumors floating around TikTok and Netflix.

The creepy handyman down the street

So, here's the absolute wildest part of this whole thing: yes, the historical records actually show that he did baby sit for his neighbors back in Plainfield, Wisconsin. Harold Schechter and all those big biographers note that before he was caught for his horrific crimes, Gein was just known as this quiet, eccentric local handyman who took on odd jobs, which inexplicably included minding the local children.

But before you completely panic and cancel every date night for the next eighteen years, you need to know that Hollywood took a massive creative liberty with this stuff. The documentaries and dramatizations love to show these terrifying scenes of him doing magic tricks with human remains for kids or luring them back to his farmhouse of horrors, but none of that actually happened. From what historians can piece together, he was just a weird guy who the kids actually sort of liked, and there's no record of him ever harming a baby or child that was left in his care. He was investigated for the disappearances of two local teenagers, but he somehow passed lie detector tests and the police cleared him.

The whole thing is deeply unsettling, but it points to a much bigger issue that every single millennial and Gen-Z parent deals with today. The virality of this creepy historical footnote isn't really about a guy from the 50s, it's about our own primal, stomach-churning anxiety over handing our most precious, fragile little humans over to a complete stranger so we can go eat a lukewarm plate of fajitas in peace.

The absolute circus of finding someone to watch your kids

Finding a reliable caregiver out here in rural Texas is basically an extreme sport that makes me want to pull my hair out. I don't know who's running the local neighborhood Facebook pages these days, but trying to hire someone to watch your kids has become more stressful than applying for a mortgage. Half the people who message you back completely ghost you the day before you're supposed to go to a wedding, and the other half show up with a list of demands that makes my head spin.

I remember trying to find someone just to watch my oldest when he was a toddler, and bless his heart, he was an absolute feral nightmare of a child. I hired this girl who looked great on paper, paid her an ungodly amount of money, and came home to find her asleep on my couch while my son had painted the hallway walls with a tube of diaper rash cream. I swear the going rate for a teenager to sit on their phone while your kids tear the house apart is approaching twenty-five dollars an hour, and I simply don't have the budget to fund someone's TikTok scrolling habit while my house burns down.

The anxiety of leaving them is so heavy that sometimes I wonder if leaving the house is even worth the mental load of writing out three pages of instructions about which specific blue cup the middle child requires to prevent a total nuclear meltdown. Some of these parenting blogs say you need to do a fully paid trial run where the sitter comes over while you're still home, but honestly, I don't have the time or the cash to pay a stranger twenty bucks an hour to watch my baby while I hide in my own pantry eating stale crackers just to see if they click.

Medical stuff and background checks that really matter

Since we can't all just rely on our moms to watch the kids, we've to figure out how to weed out the bad apples without losing our minds. My pediatrician, Dr. Miller, who's older than dirt and has seen literally everything, told me at our last well-visit that I was completely overthinking the personality of the sitters and under-thinking their actual qualifications.

He mumbled something about how infant airways are fundamentally different from adult airways and how they can choke on a rogue Cheerio in absolute silence, which terrified me enough to realize that I had never once asked a teenager if they seriously knew what to do in an emergency. He seemed to think that finding someone with a verified infant CPR and First Aid certification from the Red Cross was the only non-negotiable, and I guess my imperfect understanding of basic biology agrees with him, because a good vibe and a sweet smile won't save a choking baby.

Instead of just crossing your fingers and hoping for the best while you try to enjoy a margarita, you really need to force yourself to call those awkward references they give you and physically pin the address of the nearest emergency room to your fridge before you walk out the front door. It feels aggressive, and I always feel like a crazy helicopter mom doing it, but my grandma always said that polite people get taken advantage of, and I'd rather be the annoying mom who demands a CPR card than the one who assumed everything would just magically work out.

Leaving them when they're absolute monsters

The hardest part of leaving your baby with a sitter isn't just the safety aspect; it's the guilt of leaving them when they're in a miserable phase. My middle child, Wyatt, was a cautionary tale in what happens when you leave a teething baby with a new caregiver. He was about eight months old, completely swollen gums, running a low-grade fever, and absolutely furious at the universe.

I had to leave him for three hours to go to a dentist appointment of my own, and the poor teenage girl I hired looked like she was going to cry when I walked back in the door. He had refused his bottle and just screamed. After that disaster, I realized I had to set my sitters up for success with tools that seriously work, rather than just hoping my kids would miraculously behave.

Honestly, the one thing that has saved my sanity (and my sitters' sanity) is the Panda Teether Silicone Baby Bamboo Chew Toy. I'm usually pretty skeptical of aesthetic baby toys, but for around fifteen bucks, this little panda is an absolute holy grail in our house. When my youngest starts turning into a drooling, angry little goblin, I just throw this thing in the fridge for fifteen minutes before the sitter arrives. The food-grade silicone gets perfectly cold and numbs their gums, and because it has this flat, easy-to-grasp shape, the baby can really hold it themselves instead of chucking it across the room. It has all these different textures on it that seem to hit right on those miserable molar spots, and I love that I can just toss it in the dishwasher when we get home. If I'm leaving a teething baby, I make sure this panda is sitting front and center on the highchair.

with clothes for the sitter, I usually just leave them in Kianao's Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit. It's totally fine and does the job for layering, and the organic cotton is really soft on their skin, but I'll be honest—my kids treat light-colored clothing like target practice for bodily fluids. They somehow manage to blow out the back of this onesie every single time I leave the house, bless their hearts. It washes out decently well if you hit it with stain remover fast enough, but I wouldn't call it blowout-proof. It's a solid basic, but keep your expectations realistic with baby poop.

Setting the scene so you can sneak out

The other trick I've learned is that you need a designated "safe zone" that the sitter can rely on when they need to go heat up a bottle or just catch their breath. If you just leave them in a messy living room, the baby is going to crawl toward the one electrical outlet you forgot to cover.

We set up the Wooden Baby Gym in the corner of the nursery, and it's a lifesaver. It's this sturdy A-frame wooden setup with these cute little animal toys hanging down, and it's aesthetic enough that it doesn't look like a neon plastic factory exploded in my house. Dr. Miller said something about how tracking objects helps their visual development and depth perception, but all I know is that it keeps my baby happily swatting at a wooden elephant for twenty solid minutes so the sitter can honestly put the toddler down for a nap without the baby screaming at her ankles.

If you're trying to build up a stash of things that will genuinely keep your kids happy while you escape the house for a few hours, you can browse Kianao's collections to find what works for your chaos.

Look, the reality of motherhood is that you're going to need a break, and finding childcare is terrifying enough without true crime documentaries making it worse. You have to take a deep breath, ignore the serial killer myths, vet your people ruthlessly, leave them with a solid teether and good snacks, and walk out that door. You've earned a hot meal. And if you need to restock your survival kit before your next night out, go grab that panda teether so your sitter doesn't quit on you.

The messy reality of vetting childcare (FAQ)

Did Ed Gein really babysit kids?

Yeah, as much as I wish it was entirely made up by Hollywood, the guy really did watch children in his hometown of Plainfield. He was the local odd-job guy, and neighbors trusted him to mind their kids. The wildly gross stuff you see in movies about him showing kids body parts or doing creepy magic tricks is completely fabricated nonsense, though. He was eventually cleared in the disappearances of local teenagers, and there's no record he ever hurt a baby, but it's still enough to make my skin crawl.

How do you honestly background check a teenager?

You can't really run an FBI background check on a 15-year-old, so you've to do the legwork yourself. I always ask for two phone numbers of parents they've sat for before, and I honestly call them and ask if the kid is glued to their phone or if they genuinely play with the baby. I also casually stalk their public social media, because I'm just gonna be real with you, if they're posting TikToks while they're supposed to be watching toddlers, they aren't coming to my house.

What's a reasonable price to pay someone to baby sit?

It depends heavily on where you live, but out here in rural Texas, I'm seeing anything from $15 to $25 an hour depending on how many kids you've. It physically pains my budget to hand over a hundred bucks just so I can go to a cheap dinner with my husband, but you really do get what you pay for. If you want someone who genuinely has CPR training and won't fall asleep on your couch, you're going to have to pay a premium.

How do I know my baby is safe if they can't talk yet?

This is the exact thing that keeps me up at night. Since a baby can't tell you if the sitter ignored them all night, you've to look for behavioral clues. If my kid is reliably hysterical when a certain person walks through the door, or if their diaper is completely soaked when I get home, that's my cue to find someone else. You have to trust your gut on this one—if something feels off, just lose their number.

Should I use a nanny cam when I leave the house?

I used to think nanny cams were only for paranoid people, but honestly, having a basic Wi-Fi camera in the nursery gives me so much peace of mind. I don't sit at the restaurant staring at my phone the whole time, but being able to quickly check that the baby is honestly asleep in their crib and not crying alone makes the anxiety so much more manageable. Just tell the sitter the camera is there—it's super weird and usually illegal to hide them anyway.