I think usually this is because the infant has already autonomously asked the other parent for something, even if that something is what the closer parent is trying to do, and for some reason the infant’s autonomous actions override even player-directed actions for all other sims. You need to cancel the action in the infant’s queue, not the adult’s. And if a sim is stuck just staring at an infant? Reset that infant, not the stuck sim.
I agree it’s frustrating that you can get social services threatening to take the kid away because they’re hungry, but they’re too busy fussing about how hungry they are to let you feed them. 🤦🏼♀️