Parenting Journal · Volume 2 · Issue 5 · Licensed source edition
Parental Acceptance of Children’s Storytelling Robots: A Projection of the Uncanny Valley of AI
Originally published 2021-05-19 · Frontiers in Robotics and AI
Frontiers Media SA · DOI 10.3389/frobt.2021.579993 ↗
AI / system type
Hypothetical social-robot design; no LLM or autonomous robot trial
Direct parenting evidenceDirectly addresses parents or caregiving, including parent studies, syntheses and audits of parenting advice.
The AI connection
The research explores AI storytelling robots through speculative designs and parent interviews.
Why this reading matters
Provides a concrete family ritual for discussing the boundary between convenient assistance and trusted companionship.
Editorial reading guide · Trust
Which parts of story time would we want an intelligent robot to share?
Parents balanced possible storytelling help against worries about simulated emotion and children’s attachment. Acceptance depended on the setting and the robot’s apparent agency and intelligence, not simply on how advanced it seemed.
Study context
Eighteen parents from a US Midwestern city and surrounding area considered fictional storytelling-robot designs; fourteen were mothers.
Age / stage: Preschool children aged 2–5 years
Read with three questions
- When did parents welcome assistance and when did it feel intrusive?
- Why did emotional or adaptive capabilities create ambivalence?
- Which concerns are speculation rather than observed effects on attachment?
Keep the limits in view
Parents reacted to design fiction rather than using a deployed robot over time. The small local sample cannot establish child preferences, literacy benefits, emotional dependence, or a causal uncanny-valley effect.
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Original authorship, publication date, journal and DOI are preserved. This issue’s TRICK placement and reading questions are editorial additions, not claims made by the original authors.
Chaolan Lin; Selma Šabanović; Lynn Dombrowski; Andrew D. Miller; Erin Brady; Karl F. MacDorman (2021). Parental Acceptance of Children’s Storytelling Robots: A Projection of the Uncanny Valley of AI Frontiers in Robotics and AI. https://doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2021.579993
Permissions checked against the saved article notice; repository publication notices screened 2026-11-04. This is not a new peer-review decision. The source authors and publishers are not represented as endorsing this issue.