Baby apps: (Mis)understandings of data-driven care

Baby apps are everywhere - from tracking ovulation and pregnancy milestones to monitoring sleep, feeding, and development after birth.

For many parents, these popular mobile applications have become part of everyday life, offering new parents support, structure, and a sense of control as they step into the world of parenting.

But with all this data at our fingertips, a number of questions and concerns around the impact of these apps are emerging:

• How does using these apps affect trust - between family members, and in parents’ own caregiving practices?

• What happens when decisions about a baby’s health or routine are shaped by app-generated insights?

• How do these tools influence how caregiving responsibilities are shared within the parenting team?

• And how are these apps shaping the transition to parenthood?

This panel brings together parents, professionals and researchers with lived experience and expertise to explore the role of baby apps in contemporary parenthood. We will talk about what’s helpful, what’s challenging, put concerns into context, and consider what kinds of app use may be useful - or not.

Please join us at ACMI or online via Zoom for this free public event from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child and ACMI.

Complimentary canapés and drinks will be served immediately after the event.

MEET OUR PANELLISTS

• Dr Josie Hamper, University of Oxford

• Barb Glare, Breastfeeding Conferences / Canopy Health Education

• Kaitlyn Dienelt, Accredited Practising Dietitian

• Dr Robbie Fordyce, Monash University

• Philippa Amery, Queensland University of Technology

  
  

Dr Josie Hamper is a Research Associate in the School of Geography and the Environment, at the University of Oxford, where she is part of the Technological Life research group. Her research explores how digital technologies, information and data shape people’s lived experiences of health and medicine and their interactions with healthcare services. Josie has a particular interest in reproductive and maternal health and parenting, and has studied health apps, new technologies in fertility treatment, and most recently, health content on social media. Josie also works on the advancement of qualitative methods that help us understand people's everyday digital health practices.

Barb Glare is an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC) based in Victoria, Australia. She is a Life Member of the Australian Breastfeeding Association and has extensive experience supporting mothers, infants, and families through both clinical practice and education. Barb is the Director of Breastfeeding Conferences/Canopy Health Education and a founding member of the Warrnambool Breastfeeding Centre, where she has been instrumental in creating accessible, evidence-based learning opportunities for health professionals worldwide. Her work focuses on advancing lactation knowledge, bridging clinical practice with current research, and fostering collaborative, family-centred care.

Kaitlyn Dienelt is a highly passionate and experienced Accredited Practising Dietitian. She completed her Bachelor of Nutrition and Dietetics (Honours) at Flinders University with her honours research focusing on the use of infant feeding tracking apps in breastfeeding mothers, before later completing a Masters in Public Health with the University of Queensland. Kaitlyn gained valuable skills on the principles on qualitative research throughout her degrees. Kaitlyn has since had experience working within private practice, corporate wellbeing and Aged Care. She currently works as an Assistant Director in the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission’s Food, Nutrition and Dining Unit bringing her passion for advocacy and supporting people to life in her role.

Dr Robbie Fordyce is the loving dad of Freddie. Freddie is a very busy 16 month old toddler who loves to investigate power outlets, bother his elderly dog, pull books apart, explore new and exciting illnesses, stay up late, and generally get into mischief. Robbie uses parenting apps to manage Freddie’s health and wellbeing, and reflects on this experience in the context of his academic research. Robbie has over forty scholarly publications on the rules, exploits, and politics of digital technologies, and is currently a DECRA (Discovery Early Career Researcher Award) Fellow and Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Arts at Monash University.

Philippa Amery is an early childhood teacher, parent and PhD candidate investigating first-time mothers’ everyday digital practices at the Queensland University of Technology and the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child. Her research interests include mother-infant, family, and classroom interactions, motherhood studies, and early childhood education.

OUR PANEL CHAIR

Dr Katrin Langton's work explores how the design and affordances of mobile applications designed to support parents and parents-to-be shape understandings of ‘good’ parenting, and the experiences and practices of caregiving in the context of family life. Her current research builds on her doctoral studies. It focusses on defining the emergent field of baby app studies, on situating this field within, and in relation to, the multi-disciplinary study of digital childhoods, and on informing a new research agenda that centres the themes of care and relationality in the everyday use of digital tools.

Please note: if you select online attendance, a Zoom link will be sent to you via email a day prior to the event.