Parents have a profound sense of responsibility for their children — including the responsibility to manage their children's use of digital media.
Digital parenting is strongly associated with the responsibility to moderate device use and children's exposure to screens. But research suggests this responsibility is often not distributed evenly and that this "digital labour" commonly falls to the primary caregiver — predominantly the mother.
Mothers are often disproportionately burdened with the task of moderating screen time or ensuring "quality" screen time for their children.
Simultaneously, mothers are expected to use digital media for health information, to seek support in parenthood and to maintain important social and kinship ties via digital channels.
This role of "family health manager" and the "media accounting" of family life also requires mothers to make decisions about their children's and family's online data privacy.
A familiar scenario of digital parenting
When Veronica's period-tracker app suggests she might finally be pregnant, she downloads a pregnancy-tracker app with excitement. Throughout her pregnancy, the app helps her monitor her diet and the development of her baby — information she shares with her husband.
Once their son Jack is born, she uses a breastfeeding app to track feeds, nappies and sleep, while her husband also suggests the use of an app to support Jack's cognitive development.
At the age of two, Jack is introduced to the family's tablet computer to keep him busy while he's too ill to go to daycare and Veronica has to work from home.
As he gets older, Jack becomes increasingly interested in digital rather than physical play and begins to push back against screen-time restrictions.
As a result Veronica, as the primary caregiver, spends much more time talking to her child about using digital technologies in the home; monitoring his screen time and activities via parental control software; and finding alternative ways to occupy him.
Moderating Jack's screen time becomes even harder when he eventually needs his own device for schoolwork.
Although Veronica and her husband try to share parenting tasks evenly, it often falls to Veronica to carry the additional mental load of the digital labour involved in parenting, while her husband checks on how well she manages these responsibilities, from the sidelines.
Unspoken expectations of the primary caregiver
Like many aspects of life, parenting tasks and responsibilities are both facilitated and made more complex by digital technologies.
Veronica's story illustrates the often unspoken expectations to harness the benefits and minimise the risks of technology use in the family. This can result in the disproportionate burdening of one parent over another.
The tasks performed by Veronica are examples of digital labour in parenting.
Similar to other kinds of domestic and caregiving work, these activities are intangible, unpaid and undervalued — and commonly performed by mothers.
These patterns are not just a local Australian trend.
In a study that explored digital parenting and family media practices during the COVID-19 pandemic in seven countries including Australia, 114 out of 130 interviewees were mothers. They volunteered to participate in the study although they often referred to their partners as the more "tech-savvy parent".
Why is it happening?
The unspoken expectations and responsibilities of mothers are by no means a new phenomenon, but they have found new expressions in the digital age.
Online spaces for parents — such as parenting apps, blogs and websites — are often deliberately gendered. By tailoring content to an assumed female audience (via language, colours, imagery and so on), online spaces aim to attract advertisers who are trying to target that specific audience.
Adapting content in this way not only treats parents as consumers, but it also normalises the impression that the mother is the primary caregiver by default.
Yet, despite many parents' desire for more inclusive conceptions of parenting roles, and despite the increasing recognition that more diverse representations can also be of commercial benefit, meaningful change in social norms and expectations continues to be slow.
Women are therefore already well-accustomed to digital labour in parenting, even before a baby arrives.
And once the baby is born, the associated responsibilities are effectively transferred from one stage of digital engagement to another.
What can you do?
Taking a more team-based approach to digital parenting helps parents better manage feelings of helplessness and guilt when it comes to moderating children's digital media use and ensuring family's data privacy.
Both members of the parenting team need to reflect on the division of their roles, and fathers in particular need to push back against the default role of "backup" parent.
Although there's no one-size-fits-all approach, some couples feel as though they have struck the right balance — in digital labour and in parenting more generally.
In the study of contemporary parenthood in digital spaces, participants from non-traditional family structures seemed particularly good at negotiating equitable role divisions.
Same-sex couples without a gendered "script" to follow actively negotiated and discussed their parenting roles regularly, instead of taking each other's involvement for granted.
Other couples ensured that even if one parent spent less time on caregiving, both parents shared the responsibility of decision-making about parenting.
For example, a father might proactively explore the privacy considerations around their local day care centre's use of a collaboration and communication app, and both parents make an informed decision together on whether to agree to its use.
While it is best to have conversations about parenting roles and responsibilities early, it's never too late to do things differently.
In parenting, routines change all the time. As we adapt to our children's changing needs, there are plenty of opportunities to renegotiate our roles within the parenting team.
Even if change is hard, supporting your child's wellbeing in relation to digital technologies, and improving your relationship quality with your partner, is worth it — and ongoing engagement in both gives your family a chance to grow together, not apart.
Katrin Langton completed her PhD at the Digital Media Research Centre in Meanjin (Brisbane) and the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child. Her research explores how digital technologies mediate family life, parenthood and infancy. Dr Xinyu "Andy" Zhao is a research fellow at the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child, Deakin University. His research interests include digital parenting, migrant families and Chinese digital diaspora.