Spill-over Effects of Spousal Domestication on Childhood Development

This paper investigates the "spill-over effect" of digital spousal domestication, the systematic management of a partner’s autonomy through AI and surveillance on the developmental trajectories of children within the modern household. While current literature primarily addresses technology-facilitated abuse as a dyadic issue between partners, this study adopts a family systems perspective to explore how children become indirect subjects of omnipresent digital scrutiny. Drawing upon Social Learning Theory and Goffman’s sociological concepts of "frontstage" and "backstage" behaviours, the research argues that growing up in a digitally domesticated environment normalizes privacy violations and fosters a distorted understanding of intimacy, where monitoring is conflated with care.