i'm sure when they are...um...doing the wild monkey dance....in the matrix, the machines...um...stimulate certain parts of the body and collect samples from the male. then they take that sample, route it to the female with which whom he was doing the wild monkey dance with and put his sample inside her. if the actual body gets pregnant, the machines detect it and so she becomes pregnant within the matrix.
i also suppose that the machines would perform child birth as well. Once that happens, they probably take the child and put him/her in a new pod...like we saw in the first movie
I agree with Ushgarak. It would be totally clinical. Much like lab work complete with artificial wombs etc. Massive intelligence growing it's fuel source without endangering the crop. Picking them when they are ready to be inserted into the "mainframe" itself. We saw a glimpse of that in the first Matrix movie. Very very cool concept. In the mind of those plugged into the Matrix mainframe they believe they are really engaged in sexual reproduction but in reality they never touch anybody and are in their individual pods. The A.I. have them believe the false reality to prevent loss of "entire crops" of adult fuel sources.
Yeah..i think they can have children. But, as ush said, created genetically within the matrix (or not even....simply harvested new born is placed in one of 'em tubes and plugged into the matrix as 'son of:...'😉
or maybe they didn't think it at this grade of details 😛
But newborns outside of matrix don't have those plugs...so they get to miss al the ass-kicking within the matrix. But i guess it can be implanted