Phubbing emerges as a measurable psychosocial stressor in late pregnancy
In a prospective observational study of term pregnant women who delivered vaginally, phubbing — the act of ignoring a person in favor of a mobile phone — tracked closely with two outcomes that matter in the delivery room and immediately after birth: fear of childbirth and very early maternal-infant bonding. The cohort was small, but the signal was strong. Among 75 women with term pregnancies at 37 to 42 weeks, higher phubbing scores were linked to higher scores on the Wijma Delivery Expectancy/Experience Questionnaire-A and lower scores on the recoded Mother-to-Infant Bonding Scale completed on postpartum day 2.
The sample had a mean age of 27.1 ± 4.3 years, and the associations held even after adjustment. In the bonding model, higher phubbing remained independently associated with less favorable bonding scores, while age, multiparity, body mass index, and fear of childbirth were not significant. In the childbirth-fear model, phubbing also remained independently associated with higher W-DEQ scores, while multiparity showed the expected inverse relationship with fear. The study explained 49.9% of the variance in bonding scores and 58.2% of the variance in fear-of-childbirth scores, suggesting that this behavior captured a clinically relevant slice of the psychosocial environment surrounding labor and birth.
One result stood out immediately: phubbing was strongly tied to both anticipatory fear and the earliest postpartum attachment measures.
A social behavior with plausible perinatal consequences
The association is biologically and behaviorally plausible. Late pregnancy and labor already place substantial demands on attention, emotional regulation, and interpersonal support. When a partner or close support person repeatedly diverts attention to a phone, the pregnant patient may experience reduced reassurance, reduced emotional synchrony, and a diminished sense of being attended to during a period when trust and calm can shape the entire labor experience. Fear of childbirth is not just a subjective complaint; heightened anxiety can amplify pain perception, reduce coping capacity, and make the labor experience feel more threatening than it otherwise would. That emotional load can carry into the first hours and days after delivery, when initial bonding begins to form.
The finding that phubbing correlated positively with W-DEQ scores and negatively with bonding scores fits that pathway. The two scales moved in opposite directions, and the magnitude of the correlation was substantial. The recoded maternal-infant bonding measure was used so that higher scores represented more favorable bonding, which makes the negative association with phubbing easy to interpret clinically: more phone-distracted interpersonal interaction around childbirth lined up with weaker very early maternal-infant attachment.
A second result deserves equal attention. Multiparity was associated with lower fear of childbirth, but it did not erase the phubbing signal. Even in women with prior birth experience, greater phone-related social disconnection still tracked with more childbirth fear after adjustment. This suggests the effect is not simply a proxy for parity, age, or body habitus. It may reflect a distinct relational stressor operating during the perinatal window.
What the regression models actually showed
The investigators used Spearman correlation and multiple linear regression with heteroskedasticity-consistent HC3 standard errors, a sensible choice for a small observational dataset with potential variability in responses. In the adjusted bonding model, phubbing carried a negative coefficient of B = −0.254 with a standardized beta of −0.704 and p < 0.001. In plain terms, higher phubbing scores aligned with meaningfully lower bonding scores after accounting for the other factors in the model.
The fear-of-childbirth model was similarly direct. Phubbing had a positive coefficient of B = 1.153 with a standardized beta of 0.674 and p < 0.001. Multiparity was associated with lower W-DEQ scores, with B = −8.036 and p = 0.035. Age and BMI did not reach statistical significance in that model.
Because MIBS items were recoded so that higher scores reflected better bonding, the direction of effect is especially important here. The data do not suggest a vague emotional drift. They point to an inverse relationship between phubbing and the earliest measurable phase of maternal-infant connection. The postpartum day 2 assessment also places the finding squarely in the immediate transition from pregnancy to motherhood, when staff often focus on feeding, pain, sleep, and vital signs, while the quieter emotional architecture of bonding may be overlooked.
Why this matters at the bedside
The clinical relevance lies in the possibility that a simple, everyday behavior may help identify families at higher psychosocial risk during labor and the first postpartum days. Phone distraction around childbirth is not a diagnosis, and this study does not establish causality. Still, the pattern is specific enough to deserve attention from obstetric teams, midwives, and perinatal mental health clinicians. If persistent phubbing reflects low relational attunement in the support environment, it may be acting as a marker for a broader context of reduced emotional support during one of the most vulnerable periods in maternal care.
That possibility becomes more important because the study measured outcomes before the bond has had much time to develop. Early maternal-infant bonding is fragile, and the first 48 hours can shape how a patient experiences the newborn, feeding, and recovery. In that setting, even modest reductions in emotional presence from a partner or support person may feel amplified.
The authors also reported no specific grant support, and the work was approved by the Non-Interventional Clinical Research Ethics Committee of Kütahya University of Health Sciences. Written informed consent was obtained from all participants. Those details do not strengthen the association itself, but they do frame the study as an investigator-driven, single-center observational analysis rather than a commercial or intervention trial.
The central limitation is already visible in the design. A cohort of 75 women from a single center cannot settle whether phubbing causes fear of childbirth or poor bonding, or whether higher anxiety and weaker support dynamics make phubbing more likely. Later postpartum assessments are also missing, so the durability of the bonding signal remains unknown. Larger longitudinal studies will need to determine whether the same pattern persists across different settings, different support structures, and later stages of the postpartum period before anyone can translate this into practice guidance.
For now, the study offers a clear clinical prompt: phone-distracted support during labor may not be as trivial as it looks from across the room.