Sims standing around instead of taking care of infant

I think fundamentally sims just don't want to/the programming isn't sophisticated enough for them to care for their infants. Adding script mods (I recommend 'slow infant needs decay' by kuttoe and others to limit 'check infant/toddler') does make playing them not as stressful and actually fun for me sometimes, but while I was still vanilla, a couple of things helped:

1. Check that the infant doesn't have any queued or current interactions. If your caregiver is about to feed the infant and they have 'coo with [caregiver]' 'watch [caregiver]' 'what's that?' as an ongoing action, your caregiver won't be able to do anything until it's over. Infant interactions will often override current caregiving interactions too, which contributes to the messiness.

If there are queued/current infant interactions, cancel them all. Enable cheats and use 'reset object' if needs be.

Likewise if there are more than one caregiver in the household, check that the second hasn't autonomously queued interactions with the infant. If this continues to be an issue, set the caregiver you don't need a task, such as upgrading plumbing or going for a run. Queue up several different interactions if needs be.

2. Minimise distractions. I find 'judge decor' to be the biggest culprit. Sims will put down a hungry, stinky wailing infant and go and complain about my farmhouse wall sculpture. So removing any decor likes and dislikes entirely limits this. Also make sure the television or stereo is off. Move them into the household inventory if you have to. 

3. Play as the infant and ask to be fed/bathed etc. I'm not a modder and don't have any cold hard data to supplement this, just a hunch really. But it seems like caregiving tasks are less likely to be ignored when you click on the bath as an infant and ask to be bathed as opposed to making a caregiver do it. It also limits the problem of infants having contrary queued interactions as in No 1.

4. Forgot to say but sometimes you have to break down a task into "bite size" pieces. Ie. if I want my caregiver to give an infant a bath, sometimes I have to tell them to pick up the child, then click the "give bath..." option, rather than just clicking on "give bath" only to watch them stare confusedly at the infant for hours on end. Also smaller homes, especially if they lack stairs, definitely makes infant care easier.

Hope this helps!

Experiencing same problem with Sims in all households and all saves stalling for anywhere from 2 - 12* in game hours when prompted to feed or bathe infant. I try using strategies like reset object (on parent and child) and trying having child ask to be fed/bathed if me telling parent to does not work. These strategies usually don't work. The only mod I use is MCCC, and I don't use any custom content. *NOTE: the only reason my Sims don't continue neglecting their infant longer than 12 hours is because I will then build a tiny room with nothing in it (except bathtub if relevant) and teleport parent and infant into locked "room". Usually if they are locked in a small space with nothing else to pay attention to, they will then attend to their baby's needs. - I often have to use this same strategy to get parents to bathe toddlers.

Been suffering from this issue since last year regardless of mods/cc. It becomes a stressful nightmare when you have more then one infant in a household.

As cute as they are, playing with them isn't fun when the game just doesn't understand the action or randomly cancels it 

On top of the annoying gameplay issues mentioned above, I hate how long it takes the infants to learn milestones as well. It would have been nice to have a skill bar like toddlers have so you can see the progress on how close to getting their infant skills will take. If I didn’t play long life span I would never meet all the milestones before they age up and even with long life span it takes many days to get them. 

Thought this was just me... I ended up aging the infant up because nothing I did worked. I repaired my game several times, I always make sure my Mods and CC are updated before playing. Hoping this is fixed during the next update. 

Oh this is the WORST.  I have them feed the baby, they pick it up, put it down, put it in the crib, pick it up, feed, sit it down, pick it up…. It’s exhausting. 

Yes, so tired of telling the parents to take care of the infant and they just stand there while the infant gets madder and madder. Yesterday this was a first, the butler was the problem. Wouldn't put the baby down, kid was red on energy and the butler wouldn't put him to sleep. I also couldn't get the butler to give the baby to anyone. 

I have found that to get sims to take care of infants I have to do some very weird things.

first they have to pick up the infant. if they dont perform that specific action they will ot take care of it.

after they pick up the infant is when I can tell them to do something eg: breastfeed.

before they do that they have to drop the infant and pick it back up. if I cancel that interaction they will not take care of the infant.

it is very annoying. I have mccc and cc installed.

I have experienced this as well. I have had to shift click and cheat needs to stop my infants being taken away. My best guess is that the adult Sims are waiting for the infant to finish an interaction e.g. cry, fuss, play with toy etc before starting their interactions. But when an infant is hungry or tired they will just queue up cry interactions over and over again and the adult Sims don't get a chance to interrupt it. What should happen is that any care interactions from an adult sim should override whatever the infant is doing.