Raised by Robots: Imagining Posthuman “Maternal” Touch

Posthuman parenting is fast becoming a reality with the development of technologies such as artificial wombs and childcare robots. Debates and concerns about these technologies often centre around questions on the risks and benefits of increased technological intervention in pregnancy and child-rearing, while also circling around enduring feminist concerns regarding whether these technologies herald the liberation of women from biologically determined motherhood, or whether they herald a dystopian age of patriarchal reproductive control. This chapter seeks to move beyond practical ethical estimations to consider the potential significance of the experiential dimensions of ectogenesis and robot childcare as imagined in a range of media. The chapter takes a phenomenological approach that considers the particular, material implications of such technologies and the complex relational networks they are designed to replace and/or augment. As such, the chapter concentrates on the phenomenon of machine–human touch as speculated in depictions of technological gestation and robot childcare. Examining news reports, press releases, as well as science fiction literature and film, this chapter suggests that these technologies, as projected, predicted, and imagined, assume a biocentric model of the human that overlooks the relationality of being, treating humans (even in infancy) as autonomous, hyper-individual cognitive subjects. In doing so, the chapter questions just how far technology can intercede for “maternal” touch.