What happens to a child born without a mother? We don’t yet know. For all of human history, every child has had a mother. But now we are contemplating a world where that may no longer be true; and while the psychological consequences are unknowable, they will be profound.

The Telegraph reported this week that American researchers have made a major breakthrough by successfully replacing the DNA from an egg with the genetic material from another person’s skin. Although this research is in the very early stages, that means it may soon be possible to grow an embryo without DNA from a biological mother. While surrogacy has made it possible to separate biological from gestational mothers, this new practice — if ever combined with artificial wombs — could mean the removal of both.

It should be noted that this is, of course, some way off being fully realized. But what is unsettling is that our cultural imagination is already adapting to this disembodied and motherless possibility. Instead of pausing to reflect on the consequences, it is cast as an inevitable milestone in the relentless march of progress. The language of liberation and choice is rolled out, while those who raise awkward questions about children’s health or emotional needs are dismissed as divisive or old-fashioned. Once again, we risk ignoring the wisdom of the ages in our rush to the next breakthrough.

The concept of the “unmothered child” is not new. The English psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott highlighted how an infant’s security depends on a consistent, attuned caregiver, who is usually the mother. A mother’s body, touch and gaze form the soil in which a child’s self first takes root. When this presence is disrupted, by abandonment, loss, or prolonged separation, children often describe an ache that is difficult to articulate but unmistakable in its depth. We used to see this as a tragedy for both mother and child. Now, astonishingly, we are willfully creating it in the name of innovation.

For centuries, Roman law offered a simple truth: mater semper certa est, or “the mother is always certain.” Paternity might be disputed, but maternity was beyond question. Today, nothing is certain. The prospect of creating human eggs from skin cells and gestating babies in artificial wombs takes us beyond biology itself and into the realm of transhumanism.

While it promises liberation from the body’s limits with the potential for improved health and a relief from pain, it’s also true that transhumanism unsettles the very meaning of being human. If reproduction is outsourced to the laboratory, the most intimate act of human creation becomes a technical procedure, unmoored from the organic bonds that have always tied us to one another. Transhumanism may promise no more infertility and fewer tragic accidents of biology. But at what cost? Families come in all different shapes and sizes — that’s life. But it is quite a step further to normalize motherlessness, biological and gestational.

What, we might reasonably ask, does it mean for a child to grow up in a world in which motherhood is not a given? Could it mean increased anxiety, detachment and disrupted stress regulation for those without a mother’s care in early infancy? To worry about this is not to deny adult desires, but to suggest that children’s needs must be considered fully before any decision is made.

Giving birth to a child — if we can still use that phrase — should not be seen as a scientific achievement, but as the arrival of a fragile human being into the world, in need of mothering and fathering. This can never be replicated in a lab. This was spelled out decades ago when American psychologist Harry Harlow’s infamous experiments with rhesus monkeys showed that maternal warmth, touch and comfort matter just as much as food for healthy development. The baby monkeys clung to soft cloth surrogates rather than wire ones, desperate for nurture over mere sustenance. If such primal needs are obvious in monkeys, how can we dismiss them in human infants?

As technology gallops ahead, perhaps the most radical act of all will be to stop and ask the most basic human question: what does the child need? If we cannot answer that honestly, then all our clever innovations won’t actually be about improving the human condition. If innovation fails to do that, then what is its purpose?

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Stella O’Malley is a psychotherapist and bestselling author. She is Founder-Director of Genspect, an international organisation that advocates for a healthy approach to sex and gender.

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