I didn't have a phone as new mum, but if I had

[Lookatbaby]

I KNOW I would have been distracted and looking at my phone all the time. I know this thread will be seen as controversial, judgemental. I emphasise I would have been a phone addict, but my kids were born before smartphones were a thing. I just feel as if I never see a parent with a young child who isn't looking at their phone.

YANBU: I worry babies and young children are not getting enough interaction.

YABU it's fine.

As opposed to you, who is just internet random posting vague statements like ‘teachers say kids don’t have social skills.’ No backup, no source, no context.

And nobody is being hostile - just saying that making vague statements and acting like they can justify your belief that an entire generation will grow up without empathy because you saw a mother on her phone makes you look stupid.

I think I would have been a hell of a lot less lonely and also more clued up.

I feel as if some posters are being hostile, but that's just my opinion. It's due to hostile comments being aimed at me though, so maybe..... Here again is what I am not doing: judging. I'm worried. And please notice the use of the word parent as I have employed it from the beginning. I know others will have been aware of the issue around young children having relative developmental delay. Nothing like a messy argument though instead of a reasoned discussion, which is what I was hoping for.

Could you further the reasonable discussion by explaining your statement that ‘teachers say reception aged children have no social skills’ and ‘this generation will grow up without empathy?’

Are these just your uninformed assumptions? Or do you have any actual factual basis for them?

I adored my baby and interacted loads but also read books and looked at my phone when breast feeding.

If I hadn't had a phone I would've read a book all the time!

I'm very introverted and breaks from human interaction are important to me.

Sources please.

That's because most parents try to focus when having one on one time with their child at home

If I'm wheeling the baby round in a pram, then yes that's a decent opportunity to check my phone!

No smartphone with first child.

Very grateful to have one with second child to see me through breastfeeding during the night.

Both children have grown up fine. First child does not seem particularly advantaged by my lack of phone in his early years.

Nah. I remember getting very bored by the sight of my mum's crossed legs in the 80s when she was on the landline. Maybe I was in a playpen? Not sure.

Also my dad reading a huge broadsheet newspaper. Or being dragged around shops and on errands. It was boring and now takes less time but it looks like phone scrolling.

Or the children's room at the pub. Dump the kids with a broken set of connect 4 and a pint of lemonade while the adults play the fruit machines and drink lager.

I think parents spend more time with their kids than before, if anything it might be too much.

I remember reading a library book in the park while dd1 had a nap in a pram. When they were tiny I was fully present. Yes it was often bloody boring but so much better for them

Why is reading a book better than looking at a phone?

DD is 20y so I did have a phone when she was small, though not a smart phone that can do what it does now. But at home I did have a laptop/computer the internet, TV, books, and other things I could have got equally distracted by.

A smartphone is distract myself with in those tedious periods of time just sat in a play park whilst they run around playing, ignoring you, would have been fab tbh!