Maternal Machines: Imagining Experiences in Perinatal Care

Perinatal care is a term that broadly refers to the period of time from pregnancy up to a year after giving birth. Imaginaries, fictional scenarios, patents and actual designs to support affected stakeholders during this period reflect how this topic has for a long time fed into society's dreams, fears and desires about care. Smart monitors of infants’ sleep, respiration, heart rate or temperature, cots with facial recognition, swing chairs that are ‘Alexa compatible’, chatbots for postpartum depression, ‘maternal’ Alexas or nanny robots are examples of the potentials that this topic offers for imagining scenarios for care and wellbeing. Often rich with insights about societal dreams, fears and desires about what we would like technologies to do for us, imagined scenarios can also indicate ways in which we regard those already engaged in roles of care, echoing cultural and gendered tropes. As AI and related technologies increasingly become entangled in situations of care, the imagined possibilities in contexts of such complex, sensitive and emotionally charged spaces are worth examining, whilst interrogating how HCI technologies in perinatal care could expand beyond quantifiable data and tap into sensorial, non-numerical forms of knowledge.