In the cartoon ‘Mummy was busy’, renowned Australian cartoonist Michael Leunig depicts a baby who has fallen out of a pram looking bereft while his mother is staring at her phone oblivious. Leunig is making a statement about the increasing priorisation of smart phones, specifically social media, over embodied human relationships. Predictably, his cartoon was met with a riot of objections accusing the cartoonist of ‘misogyny’ and ‘feminist baiting’. My point of departure is somewhat different: the artist has both a right and a duty to reflect the culture back to itself and to ask difficult questions. What does it mean that mothers – like all others in contemporary western culture -- are increasingly staring at their phones? What does it mean for infants and young children who form an image of themselves in and through the gaze of their mothers? In the context of the pandemic and extended lockdowns…