That's an article of faith, like black isn't white. It's no more helpful than the basic fact that humans aren't machines. [...]
Unlike industrial robots, the androids and gynoids designed as "pets" weren't designed along utilitarian or practical models. Istead, we model them on a human image, an idealized one at that. Why are humans so obsessed with recreating themselves? [...]
Children have been excluded from the customary standards of human behaviour, if you define humans as beings who possess a conventional identity and act out of free will. Then what are children in the chaos preceding maturity? They differ profoundly from "humans", but they obviously have human form. The dolls that little girls mother are not surrogates for real babies. Little girls aren't so much imitating child rearing, as they are experiencing something deeply akin to child rearing. [...] Raising children is the simplest way to achieve the ancient dream of artificial life.
—Haraway,
Ghost in the Shell: Innocence