I am trying to make both of the words in the attached file to be thinner versions of the same fonts. I have tried path effects, inset, path > difference utilizing a stroke, masking etc however nothing is working. I have searched this forum & YouTube and am yet to find a solution. The last thing I want to be doing is editing nodes for these fonts to try and thin them manually. Any advice would be greatly appreciated :)

And it must remain a text object, I suppose ?

I'd try making the artwork 20x larger, adding a stroke, use stroke to path and subtract the stroke from the original fill.

This may work better by simplifying the original artwork. Beware of double nodes. 

The result will need some node editing to smooth the lumpy areas, but better than node editing the entire object.

Once the artwork is to your liking, you can scale back down to your final size.

(I tried path>inset but did not like the results.)

Thank you, I had to hand create the word 'Baby' using the pen tool, hence why it must appear as being quite complex compared to what it should be. The word 'Nathan' is a text font. 

Neither words need to be text as such, as I am importing into Fusion 360 to extrude for a cookie stamp.

I will try the stroke option again thanks.