A short story telling about some adults receiving motherly care from a robot

Question

Many years ago I read a short story about a robot.

The robot was designed to provide parental care to some adults in a family (3 or 4 members , who are siblings). Their parents were no longer alive.

The youngest was a girl who at first did not like the robot. She was still shocked by the death of her parents. She said that they had not kept the promise to be always beside her in life.

Then the robot had an accident and was broken into pieces.

The girl was very sad but the robot was ok. In the end, she was very happy with the robot mother. Can someone help me to tell the author of the story?

Answer 1

I Sing the Body Electric by Ray Bradbury.

In the story the mother of a family tragically dies. The father finds a newly opened store that sells custom made robot grandmothers/caregivers.

The two sons love the robot but the daughter hates it. So it has to leave.

As it gets ready to enter the shipping crate the daughter has a Freudian slip, that she knew it was a mistake to become attached to the robot because it would hurt you by leaving. Just like her mother...

Horrified at letting that slip the daughter runs. Right into the path of a car. The robot saves the daughter but the robot is hit and apparently dies. The daughter is distraught.

But then the robot reactivates. She tells the daughter that she will never leave her by dying. She is a machine, machines cannot die.

The daughter loves the robot so it can stay. Over the years it helps raise the children to adulthood. Then, for a modest fee, it can be stored.

Decades later when the children are elderly, the robot comes out of storage to care for them again.

This was made into a TV movie called The Electric Grandmother starring Maureen Stapleton as the robot grandmother

Answer 2

A partial match is "I Sing the Body Electric" (sometimes titled "The Electric Grandmother"), which Ray Bradbury adapted from the Twilight Zone episode of the same name for which he wrote the script.

Following the untimely death of their mother, a family decides to buy an electric grandmother in order to help around the house and serve as a nanny for the three children. Thrilled at the idea, Tom, Timothy, and Agatha go with their father to the Fantoccini company showroom in order to custom build their new grandmother. The children take turns selecting her parts, the color of her eyes, even the tone of her voice. Weeks later, a mysterious package arrives, a sarcophagus containing their factory-fresh electric grandmother. At the turn of a key, she springs to life and quickly becomes an essential part of the family. Tom, Timothy, and father immediately begin to love her, but Agatha remains distant, untrusting. It slowly becomes clear that Agatha does not believe that grandmother will always be there for them; she is afraid that she’ll leave them, just as their mother did when she died. One day, Agatha runs from the house in tears, straight into traffic. In a flash, the grandmother pushes her to safety, only to be hit by the car herself. Agatha cries, but finds herself comforted by the grandmother, unscathed by the accident. The grandmother insists that she will never leave her, and that not even death could separate them. Agatha realizes that the grandmother is the only one who can keep that promise, and finally opens up to her.

What doesn't match is that the father is still alive and it's just three children. I found it on the TV Tropes entry for Raised by Robots.