In Isaac Asimov's 1957 novel The Naked Sun it is a plot point that the inhabitants of the planet Solaria are raised to be repelled by physical contact, a fairly common theme in Asimov's work. It is stated that Solarian children are gradually weaned off their inborn desire for human contact until they reach a state where almost all social interactions are carried out via sophisticated holographic TV. The one exception to this is sexual intercourse between husband and wife for the purpose of reproduction, which is seen by most (but not all) Solarians as a disgusting but necessary duty.
In Asimov's 1986 novel Foundation and Earth some of the characters visit Solaria millennia after the events in The Naked Sun. It says that during the intervening period the Solarians have genetically engineered themselves to be self-reproducing hermaphrodites, removing the last reason for them to ever have to meet in person.
It seems to me that the Solarians didn't need to go to all the effort of transforming themselves into practically a new species merely in order to bear children without sex. They could have done that in Elijah Bailey's time by using artificial insemination. (Possibly backed up by artificial wombs to avoid the necessity of giving birth.) Out-of-universe, the technology of artificial insemination was well known at the time when The Naked Sun was written. In-universe, without going into too much detail, it always struck me that people who never touched except for sex were not likely to have much luck getting to a stage where sex resulted in conception.
Though I greatly enjoyed Asimov's earlier novels I'm not much of a fan of his later work, so I don't know if Solaria is discussed anywhere else. It is many years since I read Foundation and Earth. Is it explained anywhere why the Solarians of Bailey's time made an exception to their "viewing not seeing" rule for sex when it would have been so easy not to? Or if it is not explained by Asimov, is there a plausible reason I have missed for this incongruity in their society?
