“It helps and it doesn’t help”: maternal perspectives on how the use of smartphones and tablet computers influences parent-infant attachment

Figures & data

Figure 1. Model of the potential influence of mobile touch screen device use on parent-child attachment in an integrated family system.

A model depicting interactions between parents, infants and mobile touch screen devices within the context of the parent-child dyad and the wider family.

Table 1. Characteristics of mothers.

	N	%
Age in years (n=30)
18–25 years	1	3.3
26–34 years	12	10.0
≥ 35 years	17	56.7
Employment (n = 30)
Full-time	5	16.7
Part-time	8	26.7
Casual	3	10.0
Maternity leave	6	20.0
Home duties	8	26.7
Marital status (n = 30)
Married	28	93.3
Living with partner	2	6.7
Single	0	0.0
Family structure (n = 30)
One child	15	50.0
Two children	12	40.0
Three children	2	6.7
≥ Four children	1	3.3
Highest level of education (n = 27)
Postgraduate degree	5	18.5
Bachelor degree	12	44.4
Year 12 secondary school	5	18.5
Year 10 secondary school	1	3.7
Other	4	14.8
Household income (n = 26)
Up to $50,000 a year	2	7.7
$50,001–$100,000 a year	5	19.2
$100,001–$150,000 a year	10	38.5
More than $150,000 a year	9	34.6

Characteristics were obtained from the ORIGINS Project questionnaires, supplemented with information provided from the interviews. Some data is missing due to incomplete responses to the ORIGINS Project questionnaires.

Table 2. Influences of device use on parent-infant attachment.

Theme	Sub-theme	Participants	Representative quotes
Enabled a better understanding of infancy	Accessing information about child development and parenting online	1, 2, 6, 7, 10, 13, 21, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30	P25 [31 yo, 12 mo, 8 yo]: ‘In using the Better Beginnings [App] with her, it just gives a bunch of different ideas and I guess, tools in some ways to help her develop and grow which just makes me as the parent, I suppose, feel like I'm doing the right thing by her and again, building that kind of relationship and connection with her in that respect.’ P27 [41 yo, 13 mo, no other children]: ‘Things like researching good food for her and different recipes and that sort of stuff makes me proud and happy to be a mum. So if I'm feeling a bit happier, that enhances our relationship. So being able to organise myself like that and get ideas and research and stuff, I like doing that and yeah, it makes me feel like I'm doing a good job.’ P1 [21 yo, 9 mo, no other children]: ‘I read a fair amount of articles on development and different ways of strengthening the fine motor skills and stuff like that… It’s definitely influenced my relationship with him and made it better over the last nine months when I've looked at why he’s behaving in certain ways.’
	Accessing ideas for infant activities online	2, 13, 21, 22, 24, 28	P24 [34 yo, 12 mo, 3 yo, 5 yo]: ‘Finding the classes and signing up for them…Like our baby sensory class…That brings me a lot of happiness knowing how much he’s enjoying it and that strengthens our bond.’ P13 [37 yo, 11 mo, no other children]: ‘It [device use] is more with some of the Facebook groups around parenthood and getting various sort of ideas of toys or activities from there to then help influence the bond which is good…Just being able to come up with different ideas for activities or outings or yeah, just different ideas of how to spend time with him. And I think that just spending time with them essentially is what helps create the bond. P21 [35 yo, 15 mo, no other children]: ‘I picked up a few [ideas] off Instagram actually. What is it? 'Play At Home Mummy’ has some fantastic sensory things to do. So whether it’s like the corn flour and water just mixed on a tray and letting him splash that…Instagram has definitely given me some really good tips of non-screen activities to do with him.’
Enhanced interactions	Playing music for infant	2, 4, 7, 9, 12, 14, 15, 17, 19, 21, 22, 23	P15 [42 yo, 14 mo, no other children]: ‘We’ve been using YouTube a bit, looking up different songs and that to sing to [infant]…Definitely it helps with our bonding together, but also learning the actions and everything to go along with the songs…I think it’s helping her and it’s also helping us bond as well.’ P4 [38 yo, 11 mo, no other children]: ‘It makes me feel more connected in that if I sing the songs we’ve seen without the screen being there or whatever, like she remembers and we do the actions together and have a laugh or a smile and I guess it makes me feel like we’re really learning from each other and really, I guess, connected in that we remember that moment or these moments that we share. It’s like building memories.’ P19 [32 yo, 11 mo, no other children]: ‘When we watch the YouTube channel it actually gives us more time of bonding because I didn’t know any kiddie songs before. Now that I watched the videos with him [infant], they helped me to know the songs as well…We use it as our bonding time …For me to get his attention I will sing a song and then I’ll start feeding him and then he’ll start eating because I’m singing. He’s watching me singing while I’m feeding him. It does help.’
	Capturing and viewing photos together	1, 2, 5, 14, 24, 25, 28, 29	P29 [35 yo, 12 mo, 3 yo]: ‘Looking at photos and videos together brings us yeah, that’s a positive experience and kind of brings us closer together.’ P12 [29 yo, 13 mo, no other children]: ‘She [infant] likes to watch the videos of herself that were taken during that day. And she sort of has a baby discussion about what’s going on in the video. She likes me recording her. She smiles for photos and stuff. And then like at the end of the day, we’ll sit and we’ll watch what we did that day and talk about it. So that’s nice. It’s very positive. She likes to just cuddle up under my wing and look at videos of herself. It’s very nice.’ P25 [31 yo, 12 mo, 8 yo]: ‘In taking selfies and videos and whatnot, when she’s able to look back on them, it’s watching her react to herself and laugh at herself and start to make the connection that, ‘Hey, that thing in the picture is me!’ Again, watching her grow and watching her develop is that kind of connection builder. That, you know, relationship builder.’
	Connecting to parent at work	6, 9, 17, 18, 26	P26 [33 yo, 12 mo, 3 yo, 5 yo, FIFO husband]: ‘It helps her connection with my husband. So that’s nice. I mean, yeah, I'm cuddling her, so she knows that I'm there. We get that bonding and she also gets to see her daddy. So that bonds us all. We’re all snuggled together. It’s all happy…We can kind of share with him and involve him in daily life. Even though he’s not physically here, we can see and talk and interact with us on the phone. And so it makes it a little bit easier.’ P6 [38 yo, 13 mo, no other children]: ‘When [husband] is on night shift (he does night shift one night a week or one week a month), at lunchtime usually then I will (or dinner time) I would get him on the WhatsApp video chat and she [infant] knows it’s him…She can understand that it’s him and she would be laughing and smiling and enjoying it. So in that way, actually it does, it is a good thing. She doesn’t do it with grandparents because she doesn’t know who they are. It’s nothing familiar. Whereas when we ring her Daddy, it’s very familiar and she knows who it is. So actually that’s one positive thing.’ P17 [35 yo, 15 mo, 3 yo, FIFO husband]: ’When my husband’s at work, we generally FaceTime once a day. Sometimes twice if he has the time. I think for him it’s easier if we just do it once a day, usually when the boys are eating dinner. They both sit in a high chair (just because my three year old has regressed to wanting to do whatever my one year old does). So I usually just set up the phone in front of them, and they talk.’
Disrupted interactions	Taking parents’ attention away from the infant	3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 14, 20, 23, 24, 27, 29, 30	P3 [31 yo, 10 mo, no other children]: ‘The mobile is the biggest distraction because you just find yourself grabbing it and checking an app if there’s a notification or something, so my attention is away from him [infant].’ P6: He [husband] has got more of a tendency to check his phone in front of her [infant] and to be holding it in front of her, which is a bit of a gripe with us. And he’s more like, if we’re playing with her in the kitchen here, you know, he’d go off and check his phone and then she’ll be looking at him trying to make eye contact and he’s looking at his phone.’ P30 [35 yo, 12 mo, 3 yo]: ‘I get distracted with it [smartphone]. So I might have seen something and then I pick it up and then I get engrossed at looking at something and then all of a sudden just realise like, Oh, she’s actually, you know, pottered over to my knee or something. She’s trying to get me to get up or something. I'm like, Oh. So yeah, it’s making me less present and yeah. So it is a negative impact.’
	Disrupting the flow of interactions	6, 10, 13, 19, 22, 25, 28, 30	P10 [39 yo, 14 mo, no other children]: ‘There is distraction of course, when you use your mobile…Maybe you are playing with him and you receive a message and you want to answer it straight back and this interrupts the flow of the playing with him. With the interaction with him. Or if he’s eating and you are helping him out eating, or you are interacting with him eating and you receive a message, it interrupts the flow.’ P13 [37 yo, 11 mo, no other children]: ‘I'll be playing with him and then I might grab my phone and check my phone. And so I do feel like that is taking away attention and focus that I could be putting on him or even just getting stuff done around the house, which would then make me feel better and feel like a better mum.’ P28 [38 yo, 13 mo, 3 yo]: ‘If it [smartphone] is either in my pocket or if it’s on the couch in the lounge room and if I'm playing on the floor with her [infant] and then the screen pops up or it beeps. And I'll just look at it and then think, “Oh, what’s this?” and I'll keep scrolling. And then she’s not getting my attention. Which I know is good for her to have independent play also. But I just think that’s stopping me from interacting with her, even if it’s only for a few minutes, it’s stopping something. It’s potentially making me miss something.’
	Affecting parent or child behaviour/ mood	1, 9, 11, 23	P1 [21 yo, 9 mo, no other children]: ‘It [device use] definitely has a negative impact because you know, if you’re busy texting somebody or calling somebody or busy watching something and they interrupt you, you get very frustrated. It’s obviously not his fault, He’s still a baby.’ P11 [35 yo, 14 mo, 4 yo]: ‘He’s like very, very clingy towards me. He hates me being on my phone. So generally he’ll be grizzly when I'm on my phone and not paying him attention. When I'm around him, obviously, because it’s not a lot, he wants my full attention…Why would that be? Because it takes the attention away from him. That’s what it is. When he’s got me, he wants me to be his. I can’t blame him really.’ P9 [32 yo, 13 mo, no other children]: ‘Occasionally he [infant] likes to play and likes to just come in the phone [call] and then try to grab it or try to press the buttons and that sort of thing. And then I try, and then I, I, I wasn’t, I'm not angry. I wasn’t angry or anything, but I probably just sort of raised my voice and that sort of thing.’

Table 3. Influences of device use on other family relationships.

Theme	Sub-theme	Participants	Representative quotes
Enhanced interactions	Between parents	1, 4, 9, 21, 26, 27	P1 [21 yo, 9 mo, no other children]: ‘During the day I get to talk to him [husband] which is fantastic. Like sending him messages or updates of our son, sending him pictures and videos which is great. Like the first time my son crawled my husband was at work and I got it on video. So I was able to send it to him. Being able to contact him when he leaves work and find out how his day was [and] keep him company while he’s on his way home because he’s got a long commute.’ P27 [41 yo, 13 mo, no other children, FIFO husband]: ‘We stay connected during the week when he’s at work, in a way that would be very difficult without devices. And it’s very nice to send him photos and videos of [infant]…It’s really nice. And it is one of the reasons, like I said, that I keep the devices on me during the day. It’s to stay connected with him.’ P26 [33 yo, 12 mo, 3 yo, 5 yo, FIFO husband]: ‘He [husband] has been FIFO since we met…you feel like you’re not fully alone [by using devices]. Even though you’re physically alone with the baby you’re not emotionally alone. And just letting the other one know that you are always there and, you know, not necessarily physically always there, but emotionally and mentally and all that. Yeah. That’s really good and helpful for us.’
	Between parent and older child	20	P20 [32 yo, 11 mo, 3 yo]: ‘At first with the iPad, sometimes when he [3 yo] is playing some of the educational games that I've got on there, he needed help with those, so I did sit with him through those and we went through it together. I think he enjoyed that just because I was there too, and he likes me to watch shows with him…I think he likes to talk about stuff that’s happening, so if I'm there, he can talk to me about what he’s watching, and same with what he’s playing. He talks to me about what he’s playing, because he’s likes to show me stuff. If I'm there too, so if both of us are doing the same thing, then I find that he seems a lot better with that than if I was to just put the screen on and leave him…It helps us get connected if we’re both using the same device and talking about it.’
	Between siblings	2, 23	P23 [29 yo, 12 mo, 3 yo]: ‘If we play music [via a touch screen device] probably like once or twice a week, we’ll just have a bit of a dance and a boogie and then they [children] will probably interact a bit together as well then.’ P2 [29 yo, 10 mo, 6 yo]: ‘She tends to, if there’s something on there [tablet computer] that she thinks is funny or great, she tries to show it to the baby or she’s got a good relationship with her, so she tries to share a lot of things. She’ll put some Wiggles on sometimes and she’ll pop it down and she’ll dance with her. So yeah, she’s good in that way with trying to share what she’s watching with her.’
Disrupted interactions	Between parents	2, 3, 4, 6, 10, 13, 14, 19, 20, 21, 23, 29, 30	P10 [39 yo, 14 mo, no other children]: ‘Since we have the internet on our mobiles, I feel like the relationship changed because we spend more time watching, like, especially when [infant] goes to bed, we spend a lot of time with the mobile rather than interacting between us. This, I think this effects a little bit the relationship. In a bad way…I feel like when like myself or my husband looks over the phone, I feel like the person is not present in that moment. So I think, yeah, in this sense, it’s in a very negative sense. Sometimes you feel like the person is with you in the room or with your son, but you have the feeling that that person is not there. Because you get so disconnected from the reality that it’s like your mind is not there. Only your body is there.’ P4 [38 yo, 11 mo, no other children]: ‘I feel like we might, we use the phones too much, like after she’s gone to bed or something like that. If we’re not watching TV together, then we kind of are both on our phones and we don’t get to really interact with the other person. And yeah, so I think I would really like that to be less. And for us to be more focussed on each other than on the phone and internet.’ P6 [38 yo, 13 mo, no other children]: ‘Rather than talk to each other we, you know, we’re on our phones a bit too much. I think it would definitely negatively impact our relationship because we’re not chatting to each other as much and we don’t communicate together as much.’
	Between parent and older child	20, 23, 29, 30	P20 [32 yo, 11 mo, 3 yo]: ‘With my husband, he’s always on his phone. I just find that the oldest always wants his attention. He’s asking him questions and stuff, but then he won’t answer because he’s on his phone and I'm just like, “Your child’s talking to you. Can you answer him please?”… He’s just being ignored because his Dad’s too distracted by whatever he’s doing on his phone. I don’t know. I just feel like the eldest just feels a bit neglected sometimes because if we’re busy on our phones or something, then he just feels a bit ignored, I suppose. I find that a lot with my husband and the phone. I get really annoyed with him especially when our oldest is trying to have a conversation with him, and he’s not really there because he’s on his phone.’ P30 [35 yo, 12 mo, 3 yo]: ‘I think that him [partner] and the kids, it can be the same as myself. I see it happen as well, where he gets distracted and, you know, engrossed in the phone and they might be trying to get his attention and it will take a minute, same as myself, to get him.’ P23 [29 yo, 12 mo, 3 yo]: ‘The three-year-old, if he’s on like the tablet or yeah, if he’s on the tablet or playing a game, he won’t be interacting with anyone. Like he’ll just be focussed on that. He won’t have any interactions with anyone unless you sit down and play it with him. Like if it’s a game and you sit down with him.’
	Between siblings	17, 20, 22, 24, 29, 30	P30 [35 yo, 12 mo, 3 yo]: ‘When my three-year-old is using something like she’s just zoned into it. So there is no communication around it at all. So trying to get her attention away from it, especially the tablet…And I try to tell my three-year-old like, “Just answer your sister [infant]” or “Your sister’s calling you”.’ P22 [41 yo, 12 mo, 4 yo]: ‘Say he [4 yo] was on the iPad watching or doing Reading Eggs while I was making dinner (which is not common, but has happened in the past) and she [infant] is happy to be in the playpen. But I see her getting, not necessarily distressed, but her attention is going to him or she’s trying to get his attention and he’s not giving her that attention at all because he’s so focussed on what he’s doing.’ P29 [35 yo, 12 mo, 3 yo]: ‘Maybe like [3-year-old] being on my iPad or watching TV, it can be hard to get his attention… If [3-year-old]'s watching something and [infant] gets in the way, he gets upset. [Infant] tries to grab the iPad or then he gets upset.’

Figure 2. Model of perceived influence of mobile touch screen device use on parent-child attachment showing positive (understanding infancy, connecting) and negative (disrupting) mechanisms within the parent-child dyad and wider family system.