Annotated Bibliography

In the 21st century, more people are struggling to keep up with daily responsibilities and technology is beginning to take over instead. Parents specifically have many struggles due to the existence of their children, coupled with their jobs and potentially school and other daily responsibilities all create a day overloaded with chores. Robots are an example of technology that could potentially be reliable and alleviate the daily responsibilities that parents have in their daily lives, especially in terms of childcare, but cannot work as a substitute for a parent due to their inability to be loving.

Robots are extremely intelligent and advanced in many ways and can handle many tasks that humans cannot in a short period of time efficiently. Robots are different from humans in many ways and do not require things such as food, mental health breaks, to rest, and more. At the most, a robot will probably just need to be charged up so that they can go back to working again. This endless ability to work would give parents the break they may feel like they desperately need and may even give them more flexibility to do other things that they want or need to do. Robots can in essence work endlessly to care for children without losing their temper, unlike a human parent.

The idea of robots functioning to take care of children is a good idea in many senses but also has its issues. Robots are incapable of feeling and expressing the same emotions as humans do, and this may impact a child’s development if they were to be raised or cared for by a robot. Robots would be unable to know when to hug a child, or kiss their scraped knee, or other things that a human parent will intuitively know and feel. The text written by Alice LaPlante Robot Nannies Are Here expresses this issue, and dives into how children can face developmental issues if they were to be raised by robots. Additionally, a robot taking the place of a parent can create a rift between the child and parent. Similar to how if a human nanny were to care for a child versus the parent of the child stepping in as the caretaker, there is a degree of distance that is created and less of a wholesome relationship is cultivated.

It can be concluded that though robots have many amazing characteristics that would allow for them to be create childcare takers in theory, in practice, they do not encompass all of the importance human characteristics that would make them good care takers and parents. Human parents have specific characteristics and abilities like love and care that robots do not have, and despite parents struggling to care for their kids due to many reasons, they work as the best caretakers at the end of the day, because all a child really needs is love.

LaPlante, Alice. “CenturyLink BrandVoice: Robot Nannies Are Here, But Won’t Replace Your Babysitter — Yet.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 29 Mar. 2017,

https://www.forbes.com/sites/centurylink/2017/03/29/robot-nannies-are-here-but-wont-replace-your-babysitter-yet/?sh=58d2c31256b7

Dormehl, Luke. “The Promise and Pitfalls of Using Robots to Care for the Elderly.” Digital   Trends, Digital Trends, 1 June 2019,

https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/robots-caregiving-for-the-elderly/