Tune in to the second episode of ‘Motherhood vs The Machine’ where Chine McDonald and Madeleine Pennington explore the paradoxes of birthing. 20/03/2025

Chine and Maddy go back to the beginning, and explore the physical and spiritual changes that takes place in pregnancy, and the embodied nature of giving birth. How has something that is a universal human experience come to signify something alien and traumatic? How does becoming a mum alter the sense of individualism Western society pushes us towards, and open our eyes to interdependence? In a so–called post–religious age, have we lost some of the rituals that recognise the transition to motherhood as a transcendent, spiritual and existential experience? We discuss the ways in which machines help women and their babies thrive; but as scientific advancement accelerates, how might the prospect of growing babies in artificial wombs or ‘bio–bags’ affect the place of mother and challenge our conceptions of what it really means to be human?   

Featured in this episode: Theologian Rachel Muers, chair of divinity at the University of Edinburgh; writer Mary Harrington, contributing editor of Unherd, and author of Feminism Against Progress; Lucy Jones, author of Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth and Motherhood; Professor Dominic Wilkinson, medical ethicist and neonatal intensive care doctor 

Warning: This episode includes discussion of pregnancy and childbirth, including birth trauma and child loss.  

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