Responsible parents on guard: Exploring domestication and responsibilisation in parents’ lived experiences with baby monitoring technologies

Baby monitoring technologies (BMTs) are increasingly sophisticated and marketed as essential tools for responsible parenting, reinforcing expectations of constant vigilance and care. This study investigates how parents domesticate BMTs and how responsibilisation manifests in this process. The study draws on in-depth interviews with 15 Flemish families and employs constructivist grounded theory analysis. Findings show this domestication is an agentic negotiation where parents balance elements of reassurance, autonomy, rationality, peace of mind, cost considerations and the ideal of letting go. This negotiation, however, is framed by a process of moral responsibilisation which manifests through three distinct but interconnected pathways: the self-guided, social and technologically imposed pathways. This process challenges the delegation of care to trusted caregivers and calls for a critical assessment of the expansion of monitoring technologies. As these technologies enable parental omnipresence, the choice not to monitor one’s child may shift from a personal decision to a political act.