Quantifying infants?
Parenthood are nowadays taking up completely new shape. From the day you get the news of conception to bringing up your newborn, you can quantify everything using gadgets and parenting applications. This indeed help struggling parents and expecting mothers to cope this major responsibility, with an ease. But how far these applications are helpful and how much we should depend on such gizmos? Well, this is quite a debatable topic. On one side such applications help parents to take care of their child. On the other hand, parents spend most of the time quantifying their kids, instead of paying attention to tiny demands, gestures and memorable moments with their child.
Gadgets like MIMO fitted onesie and other wearables like sproutling that tracks breathing rate, body temperature, heartbeat, position in the crib. Moreover, many gadgets alarms the parents if wearables fell off. So that parents won’t get worried due to lack of data. Infants wearables are embedded with intelligent technologies that helps you maintaining sleeping patterns, diaper loggers, feeding slots etc.
There are another type of applications available in app stores for medical fitness of infants. Appointments with pediatrician, vaccination records and reminders, growth tracker, weight tracker etc. New parents are so engrossed in their routine with new member in the family, that it becomes very normal to forget doctor’s visit. Such applications make sure that you reach to your doctor on time. Moreover, parents don’t have to remember baby’s every stat when they visit the doc.
These gadgets indeed are helpful for parents in their absence, when children sleeping alone or when parents are at work. Parents are more and more depending upon such gadgets with the increasing cases of SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome). Nobody wants to take the chance.
Despite of collecting so much data of infant growth, the credibility of such applications are still a question. Dimitri Christakis, a pediatrician, father, and director of the Center for Childhood Health, Behavior, and Development at the Seattle Children’s Research Institute, says that “while mining mass biometric data is considered a holy grail for many tech companies, the current manner in which they’re doing so raises concerns over how accurate that data really is”. This is true, he says, “not merely for emerging companies with new monitors, but also for existing in-hospital infant monitors, which track similar biometrics–and emit false alarms far more frequently than fair warnings”.
Even in the carefully monitored confines of a hospital setting, any such alarm rattles new parents. How might they react when they’re on their own at home? “It’s just one more way for parents to become unduly nervous and concerned” about things they needn’t worry over, he says. “It’s taking helicopter parenting to a new level.“
These gadgets provide parents valuable information but increasing dependency is something to check for. There are many parents who waste their precious time in analyzing such data and figures which they can spend with their children.
Think about it!
