Constructing Parenthood: Using Patents To Understand Values Within Infant Simulators

• In Event: Science, Knowledge & Technology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 7: Meaning-making: morals, ethics, and affect

Abstract

This paper contends with the electronic infant simulator, a robotic baby doll capable of replicating behaviors associated with early infancy and capable of surveilling how it is interacted with. In the United States, activities involving the simulator typically occur in secondary education, where students are assigned to parent them over a span of several days. Considering the simulator’s origin as an approach to teen pregnancy deterrence, I interrogate the vision of parenthood programmed into it, this vision’s relation to the simulator’s intended use, and its capacity to produce data. The simulator has been the subject of substantial empirical evaluation, though this work primarily evaluates it as a deterrent and yields largely inconclusive findings. In line with Madeleine Akrich and Bruno Latour’s approach to nonhumans, I approach the simulator as a “highly moral, highly social actor.” To understand its morality and sociality, I carry out a discourse analysis of 38 patent documents associated with the simulator, analyzing these for the mode of parenthood designers sought to replicate. I examine the intentions and assumptions encoded into the simulator and therefore, the intended ways it enables and constrains action from its users. I argue the simulator is expected to compel users to enact the role of a “consequence-bearing,” single-parent. Further, I detail how the simulator’s projected surveillance system has the dual affordance of standing in for the real social forces that shape parenthood as well as requesting immersion from users.

Author

• Mariana Lopez, University of California-San Diego