#robot parenting

After collapsing dramatically next to the bin yesterday, Servo is back on its feet – thanks to Lyndon Bush and his trusty wrench at sunrise. Nothing says “good morning” in the Bush household like kneeling on the pavement to restore your robot child’s dignity.

My wife died recently in a shipping accident, not long after we'd started incubating our first child. I had a very rough time at first, but I've been in counseling for the past three months, and I'm at a point where I can start to look forward again. Which is good, because I have a big decision to make.

We were only married for a couple years, and hadn't really talked about what we'd do if one of us died. I hadn't really thought about it. But she did. Her will asks me to use her insurance money to purchase a nanny/companion bot based on her to help me raise our son and to keep me company until I find someone else.

I miss her so much. The thought of having her back, even just a shadow of her, is almost too tempting to resist. And why should I? Doesn't our son deserve to know as much as he can about his mother?

But it won't be her. I know that. And if I really do move forward with my life and start dating again, what am I supposed to say? "And this is the mostly plastic ghost of my dead wife?" Does that come out on the second date?

- grasping at circuits

A bot built to emulate your late wife isn't a ghost. And it won't haunt you unless you let it.

You can safely honor your wife's wishes and have the bot built without worrying about what anyone might think. But what you shouldn't do is treat that bot as if it actually were your wife.

Happy New Year!

My boyfriend and I are starting to talk about having our first child, but we have a disagreement that I'm worried is going to turn into a fight.

I want to have a traditional family. Just the two of us, our child, and the nanny-bot. He doesn't want to use a bot. At all.

I understand where he's coming from. His parents handed off so much of the work raising him and holding the household together to their bots that he feels like he hardly knows them. He wants better for our child, and so do I. But parenting is a lot of work, and I don't know if the two of us are ready to handle it alone.

What if we make a mistake, or what if we can't handle the stress? I don't want to ruin our child's life just so we can play out some ancient parenting fantasy.

- New Life

Ok. First off, take a deep breath.

One of the poorly kept secrets in the parenting literature is that while it's possible for genuinely bad, neglectful, or abusive parenting to cause all sorts of problems for children there's no one right path to good parenting.

In fact, since most parenting is good enough, other than providing good genetics and meeting your child's most basic physical and emotional needs, the single most important thing you can do for them is to simply live in a healthy community.