Many expectant parents regularly use their laptops and tablets during pregnancy. The way these devices are used can either disrupt or reinforce the sense of prenatal attachment.
- The interviewed families took part in Project ORIGINS, a long-term study aimed at uncovering the causes of many chronic diseases in Australia.
“The impact of human and mobile device interaction on adults is well documented. However, its potential importance before birth has rarely been investigated,” said researchers from Curtin University in Perth, Australia. This is why they decided to carry out works, including the results were published in the journal Ergonomics. To find out parental use of the phone and tablet can have an impact on the relationship between the father or the mother and the baby during pregnancy and therefore the development of the child, the scientists recruited 27 families.
The volunteers were interviewed to examine how parents used these devices during pregnancy, how their use influenced their thoughts, feelings and behaviors towards their baby while the child was in the expectant mother’s womb. All families used their laptops and tablets for various purposes and described good levels of prenatal attachment.
Disruption or reinforcement of attachment based on device use
Some parents have used their phone to track baby’s growth or play music. According to the results, these participants felt closer to their child and were more caring towards their infant.
“However, parents who used their devices for unrelated tasks, such as scrolling through social media content or prolonged use with no specific purpose, felt a sense of disconnection with their baby. (…) In addition, several parents mentioned that seeing and reading about worst-case scenarios and extreme cases, such as stillbirth stories, while checking their phones led to increased worry,” explained Rebecca Hood, lead author of the study, in a statement.
According to the authors, practitioners should be aware of the positive and negative effects of using mobile devices during pregnancy and communicate them to future parents. This could help families maximize the benefits of this usage and reduce the harms to strengthen the sense of prenatal attachment.
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