Moms Are Getting Skewered for Using ChatGPT’s Parenting Advice Because of Course We Are
Anything that makes moms’ lives a tiny fraction easier should be taken away, right? Because moms are supposed to suffer — how else would we know that they are truly good mothers? At least, living in 2025, that’s what it feels like. In this Handmaids Tale-era, with abortion rights being stripped away, governmental benefits like SNAP being slashed, and even research into childhood diseases being defunded, it feels like everyone wants moms to live in pure misery. And even when we’ve found little ways to fight back and help ease our burdens, we get slammed for it.
Enter: ChatGPT. Sure, it’s OK if tech bros want to use it to make their work burdens easier or men use it to menu plan, but god forbid a woman try to share her mental load with artificial intelligence. Grab the pitchforks, folks!
Take TikToker Lilian Schmidt (@heylilianschmidt), for example. She started posting videos of using generative AI to help her “co-parent” and has received a ton of hate for it. The influencer used ChatGPT to create shopping lists, menu plans, help plan birthday parties and vacations, make bedtime easier, and so much more.
“I’ve built my own bot to be our co-parent,” the Switzerland mom of a 3-year-old told New York Post. She added that she uses ChatGPT “to make me a better mom.”
Schmidt credits “the mental load” for her use of ChatGPT, adding that her partner is “very involved with the kids and does his fair share,” but that still leads her to “do the thinking.”
“I asked ChatGPT to assume the role of a toddler therapist,” Schmidt told the outlet, “someone who understands their development. I asked it ‘help me understand why bed time is hard for her.’ For the last nearly four years we’d been told, ‘She needs to relax, calm down, nothing overstimulating.’ But she’d never just lie down. ChatGPT told us she needs stimulating. Let her jump around on her bed.”
“We’ve never once had a power struggle again. There are no tears or fights anymore. Within five to 10 minutes she goes to bed,” she added.
In a world where therapy is expensive (especially if it takes a while to find the right therapist), I don’t blame her at all for turning to ChatGPT for some ideas. After all, we use to have a village of support we could lean on and ask for advice and opinions. Now we have ChatGPT — and some people aren’t happy about it.
People took to X to shame Schmidt. “To be honest, for some people there’s nothing ChatGPT could do that make their parenting worse,” someone wrote, per Daily Dot. Another said, “On the bright side, ChatGPT is definitely a better parent than a mother who would leave her kids for an AI to babysit. So they’re getting higher quality care than they would were she just doing it herself.”
It’s not like she’s sitting her kids in front of a computer and letting ChatGPT watch them. She’s literally asking for advice on healthy recipes, looking to it for guidance on common problems, asking it to make coloring pages and bedtime stories for her daughter. Those of us who are wary of AI’s impact on the environment raise a brow, but otherwise, who cares? This is no different from Googling problems or reading books or asking your parenting Facebook groups.
And Schmidt isn’t the only ones who turn to tech to help with motherhood. A 2024 study found that 74 percent of parents of kids ages 5-8 used ChatGPT. One mom asked on the Toddlers subreddit how to “use ChatGPT to make your life easier as a parent?” and some people left pretty mean comments like “f— ai.”
“With respect, please think twice before using it for parenting or anything else,” another person wrote. “It is (literally) a plagiarism machine that feeds you unvetted information based on whatever patterns it thinks it sees in whatever its data inputs are.”
Someone else warned, “Do not use ChatGPT / Large Language Model AIs to diagnose or treat your child.” Which, fair. AI should never be used in place of a therapist or pediatrician or turned to for legitimate medical advice.
Others were positive, though, including people who suggested using it to make up songs using their children’s name, write thank you notes to teachers, and, yes, meal plan.
In a previous interview with SheKnows, bestselling author and founder of Good Inside Dr. Becky Kennedy opened up about parents’ mental health. “There are so many causes of stress and burnout and mental health concerns [for parents],” Dr. Becky told us. “The big theme that’s on my mind is how demanding it is to be a parent right now.”
She added, “There even seems to be shame around seeking support, because of the old narrative that this is just supposed to be done by instinct.” (And she’s not even talking about support by ChatGPT — just support, period!)
“When we remind ourselves, ‘this feels hard because it is hard, not because I’m doing something wrong,’” Dr. Becky told us, “we stop living in shame, and we feel more empowered to go get support.”
Whether that’s from a friend, a mental health professional, or ChatGPT (or all of the above), moms deserve support any way they can get it.
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