Everything Is Content - Em Rata x Postpartum Sex, Co-Parenting With ChatGPT & Choosing Your "Mum Aesthetic"

Episode Date: July 17, 2026

Hello beloved EIChilden! This week we're your committed content matriarchs, bringing you a special episode all about mothers, mothering and motherhood.We start the episode discussing a recent essay in The Cut by actor, model and author Emily Ratajkowski where she explores her post-baby/post-divorce sex life. Is her tale of degradation, millennial men and going from dimly lit bar to baby bedtime aspirational or just plain un-relatable?Then we move on to the pressure to subscribe to a particular mum-aesthetic- butter moms, analogue moms, tuscan moms, gentle moms... the list goes on and only gets more exhausting. Is this slop or a way for women to retain identity after giving birth?And finally- could ChatGPT actually be an effective coparent? Female business-owners and AI companies are banking on it, investing big in AI technology that helps mums keep on top of the mental load of parenting. We take a closer and more critical look.Thank you so much for listening! We'll see you as always next Wednesday!O, R, B xOenone's favourite depiction of motherhood is in The Gilmore Girls, Ruchira's a sucker for Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) and Never Have I Ever and Beth thinks motherhood is best depicted in Lady Bird (2017) and The Babadook (2014).LinksThe Cut - Mother F*cker by Emily Ratajkowski The New York Times - What's Your 'Mom Aesthetic' Wired - Momfluencers Are Pitching AI as a Better ‘Coparent’ Than MenDeadline - Emily Ratajkowski, Stephanie Danler & Lena Dunham’s Female-Driven A24 Series In Works At AppleTV+ Vogue - Some Sympathy For So-Called “Almond Moms”, Please by Emma SpecterThe Cut - “The Girlbossification of AI”SheKnows - Women Push Back Against Mel Robbins’ Advice to Use AI to Help Manage Finances Tracy Beaker Fandom - Cam LawsonPeople - Yolanda Hadid Jokingly Dubs Herself 'Worst Mom Ever' in Response to Critical TikTok Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm Beth. I'm Richara. And I'm Anoni. And this is Everything is Content, the podcast that analyzes the world of pop culture and trends to figure out what it says about society right now. We're an umbilical cord connecting you to the vital world of content. This week on the podcast,

we're doing a very special episode on motherhood, specifically Emily Ratchiechikowski's recent exploration of dating as a single mother, the new mother aesthetics and the rise of the AI momflances and co-parents. But before we get in, into it. I wanted to ask both of you, what has been your favorite representation of motherhood across pop culture? I am a bit of a sucker for punishment and I love the relationships when it's like a mother and daughter that are quite fraught and even if they don't mirror my own kind of dynamics with my own mom, I just really like seeing them. So something like, for example,

do you remember everything everywhere all at once? Evelyn and Joy Wang's relationship and how deeply painful it was just this feeling of like never impressing your mum, whatever you do in that kind of like constant struggle, never really connecting with her, but always having the attempts and just feeling the kind of crushing disappointment of it, never going well, that broke me so deeply, but I loved it so much.

I remember talking to someone who'd really love the film and I just went, God, it's heartbreaking, isn't it? It's a kind of like these like family systems breaking down this like constant conflict. And like, he was like, oh, I didn't really pick up on that. And I was like, oh, Christ. Like, no one. can love me as hard as my mum does. But equally, that's, you know, it's quite a frightening thing.

And it does cause untold conflict when you're a teenager and young person. And it's the sort of like, we actually lived through a war together that no one else understands. Especially with diaspora communities, there's this like, especially with your parents being first generation immigrants, there's all of this unsaid stuff. And sometimes you need to watch a film to remember that your parents are not only just people, but they're people who have gone through the biggest hurdle in life, which is moving to a country for the first time and bringing up children who are culturally very different. And I think watching that film and also Never Have I Ever, which is Mindy Kaling's Netflix, amazing kind of rom-com series, really, really cute about Nalini and Davy Vashma Kamar, this mother and daughter who have gone

through her husband, Davy's dad, passing away and trying to navigate their relationship and they've never really gotten on in the way that Davy and her dad have. And suddenly it's just them two in their family unit. That is another example of one that crushed me. Have you guys seen that? I don't think I've seen that. Oh, you would love it so much. Is it a teen drama? Or did I, is it sort of like on the cusp of teen? Like, is it like a Ginny and Georgia age group, which is actually quite adult themed, but

Teen Market? Or is this just an adult show that I've completely not paid attention to? So it's about school and it's about a girl who really just wants to lose her virginity. So it is kind of school-based, but I would say it doesn't feel like teenie. It does feel like, to me, feel like something adults would watch. And it's quite funny and silly and campy. But it has that kind of like rom-com quality. It's quite, it's just quintessension.

Mindy Kaling vibes, I think. She has got a new show out. I mean, maybe we'll talk about this another time, but she's got a new show out that's meant to be very good. But this is actually what I thought of the summary term pretty. I sort of just misunderstood it as this is just for 13 year olds and so obviously didn't watch at the beginning. But that does sound very, very good.

What are some of your favourite mom relationships, mother-daughter relationships that you've seen? I went so basic when I think about this and I just saw Lorelei and Rory Gilmore. Yeah. And I know that that is just basic Vatch. But especially now that I'm always. and getting closer to Laurelize's age.

I actually, and I'm sure I said this before, I weirdly love the idea of having like a 15 year old now. Yeah. Because I feel like I would be close enough to that age that you could really bond. And there's just something really uniquely, sweetly special about this idea of these two women like working their way through lives.

I weirdly really gravitate towards stories about like single mothers when they've just got like one daughter. There's just something really uniquely sweet about it. And even though it's obviously complicated, their bond is just so sweet. And I just, yeah, they have a place in my heart. What do you think about all the chrism that says that it's really inappropriate their relationship and she needs to treat her like a daughter.

He's codependent. I think, yeah, I mean, I'm sure that, like, if we got Philippa Perry on to talk about whether or not Gilmore Girl was good parenting, I'm sure that it probably wouldn't be. But then she turns out great. Well, does she, though? I am a real Rory, I mean, on paper she does. Yeah, she's very smart. She's in that one, we revisit in the Four Seasons one, whatever it's called.

Sorry to be a Rory Gilmore hater, I have a bit. she's morally kind of a bit of a nightmare she's having affairs she's I think she's quite a messed up individual I think I've got hope for her but I mean listen it's a messed up situation I don't know if I've just basically watched like the first like three series just back to back and never actually gone further than the cozy because I always put it on when it's like autumn and then I just start from the beginning so I might have actually not seen how she goes up to be fair and also autumn in the UK is about three weeks until it's just like winter for like 10 months so no wonder you've not got further yeah it's so true I always have it like a pasta bake or something and just

on and I'm crazy. PSL. Well, I was going to quickly say on the Gilmore Girls, I think it's Emily and Lorelei, that's the really interesting mother-daughter dynamic in that show because it's so fraught and it is so, you know, I think those two characters are actually the most like heartbreaking but also frustrating. They never really get on for years and years and years. I actually think that's a really fascinating study, those two.

Well, on that kind of like fractured parent thing, I always think of Jacqueline Wilson, especially like is Lola Rose the one where her mama has like a, she has a white leather jacket or white leather couch, I always remember. Yes. Yes. So those kind of parental, I remember reading those stories when I was little and I kind of also love that depiction because as a child, you're often not told about the ways that families, you know, can be really fractured because right at the beginning, you know, everyone's trying to pretend

that their family's really happy. And so I think reading about those stories can be really helpful, especially if you experience certain things in your home that you're like, why is this not represented? I do think Jacqueline Wilson is really the goat. There's so many dead mums in that, isn't it? So many like Duspin Baby or like troubled moms, illustrated mom. I mean, basically just, I mean, what was the series we talked about a few months ago, the one that she did an adult series of, like girls out late, dead mothers.

Is that bad, actually? I don't know. Is it bad of her, like, because what were the dads, was there only meant? The dads were always sort of like figments of the mother's imagination that the children had like never met. Absent fathers or bumbling. They never seem around. They were like kind of deadbeat dads. Did you see that the actress who played Tracy Beaker and the actress who played Justine did a TikTok the other day together?

I loved it. I went your friend, no name. Danny Harmer. Oh my gosh, your friend, yes. You have my friend. Danielle. Danny Harmer. Danny Harmer.

Yeah. And then so the actress who plays Justine looks exactly the same as she did when she was in the show. Like she has not age. She's the exact same person. It was so cute. You need to find it. Tracy Beaker's mom. She was, I mean, God love Tracy Beaker.

Her mom was a dead beat. She went for a lot that girl. What was her first? her then adoptive mom Sue Was she called Sue? No, it wasn't. I don't know why I'm... Paulie. But it's not Paulie. I can't...

I know she said she'll like... Cam. Cam. Cam. No. No, Cam was the social worker. But there was a woman with like a pixie brown hair. Who was the adoptive mom. I can't remember her name.

Fact-checking Beth here. The foster parent and eventual adoptive mother of Tracy Beaker is called Cam. She called Cam Lawson. Ruchera sadly will be sent to the dumping ground for getting that wrong. So, okay. We've had some good depictions so far. Okay, mine's a little bit.

I've got two. One, which I'm sure, we've probably talked for this, Lady Bird, which is the 2017 Greta Gerwig film. One of my favourite films actually, Searsherr-Ronen plays the teenager early 2000s. Her mum is played by Laurie Metcalf and they just do not get on. And it's this like lower middle class house that feels like when you're that age, you're kind of like everything's okay. And your parents' like parental economic problems don't really affect you until they do until you're like, why don't we have more money? Why all my friend's house is bigger? Suddenly you get ashamed of them.

And I do think that depiction of motherhood and daughterhood and the relationship is so good because it is so fraught. And it's like they love each other but across vectors where they can't actually understand one another. Like the daughter needs to be different from her mother, but the mother also needs the daughter to be different from herself. And they're both trying to achieve that by different ends. And I do think it's one of the most heartbreaking and beautiful films about mothers and daughters that unless you have been a mother or a daughter, you can never really like plumb the full depth of that film. So that is my first one. Did you both like and watch this film? Oh, I loved it.

I periodically watch it every two years, and it's annoying because I know what's coming. I wish I could just click a button, refresh. It's like that scene when they're going prom dress shopping, and her mom is just picking at her, picking at her, picking at her. And it's just, it's horrible, but it's so relatable. And having some distance from it, you can acknowledge her mom picks at her because she loves her and it's just like a way of her caring, but it's also this like need to control and this need to kind of want to.

her daughter to look and be the best and it just comes out horribly and there's the other scene in the car when they're driving and they listen to an audiobook and then by the end they're both just kind of tearing up and they've had this really intimate experience and it's just being able to hold both of those things in all of the kind of spectrum of love control difficulty experience and it just does it beautifully is it that the audio book ends and then they have a big route is that when she opens the car door and flings herself out yes yes yes gorgeous moment followed by complete catastrophe I had do you remember what I had with the holdovers when I was in a really bad move when I watched it so I didn't like it.

This happened to me with Lady Bird. Honestly, I shouldn't be allowed to watch things when I'm in my neutral face because I'm like, this is shit. But bearing mind, it's like now one of the most iconic, canonical films and like everyone, young women's life. One more to add to the pile that's very recent, I actually think is one of the freshest takes of motherhood that I haven't necessarily seen explored

was actually in Lena Dunham's fame sick when she talks about her mom's, like, complicated relationship with her fame and like her mother's jealousy. And I was like, that's probably one of the first times that I'm sure it does exist in other places, but maybe because it was memoir, it felt more striking. But I was like, that's a really interesting example about thinking about the mothers who perhaps have to experience their daughter going on to things, do things that they want to do,

and that kind of stripping them of their identity in some way. I mean, I literally just searched FAMTIC to find this quote because I remember thinking, I remember highlighting it and being like, this is so interesting. And maybe we didn't talk about it. But the quote that I highlighted was about her mother. The biggest issue and the hardest one for us to name was my career, not just the challenges I was facing but its impact on her sense of her own legacy. Something that mattered to her in the same ferocious way. The early female aviators took to the sky without regard for whether they would live or

die. Her art had always been her religion. The one thing I knew I could not touch, change in form or be more essential than. And now I was the story. I do remember pausing at that bit as well and just being like, God, that is so fascinating. You do want the best for your children. You want them to thrive. Then actually, when you're someone that's as famous, Edina Dunham, the whole family got swept into their dynamic. And I think in the book, like they don't talk for a while, do they? They really fall out even though the mum's like her North Star and whatever else. Yeah. So complex. It's so complex. Yeah. And I think also because it is such a unique case, I guess it's

so interesting. Like my parents aren't like creative. But I wonder if that would be weird because her mum's identity has been absorbed. Like everything she does. It's a bit like, you know, when someone's so-and-so's daughter, she's like Lena Dunham's mom. Nepo mom. So that is like, and that's really complicated because as a mother, I think that must be such a hard feeling to square. But she's obviously, I mean, the fact that she's let lean and write that, I think is also incredible. Okay, do you want my last one? Which I actually think, you've got to hear me out on this one.

I think one of the best portrayals of motherhood is in the Babadook. Okay. We've talked about this. Richar, I think you've recommended this on the podcast. Unless I'm misremembering, I often do hallucinate. I'm like an AI. Did you recommend this? I may have done.

I've definitely watched it because I think I maybe referenced the Babadook being a gay icon on the internet. Yes, which is true. Babadook is a gay icon, but actually, so it's a film that came out probably about 12 years ago. Australian film directed by Jennifer Kent about a mother and a son who are living in Melbourne. And she is a widow and her husband had died driving her to have the hospital to have this baby. And this kid who's like six or seven is a really difficult child. Behavioral issues, attachment issues, quite anxious, quite stressed, thinks this monster is coming and just puts his mom through a lot.

She's really struggling. And then they read this book called The Babadook, which is super terrifying. They try to get rid of it. Book doesn't go away. It possesses them. It's really good and really scary. but it also operates on a level of metaphor about motherhood and about parenting alone and how difficult that is. And basically, it's a monster film with a natural monster, but it's also a monster

where the monster is like postpartum. It's judgment on single parents. It's loneliness. It's the resentment. I do think a lot of parents probably feel frequently throughout their children's upbringing where they're like, my life is harder than it ever would have been if you had never been born. And also like the way that we make monsters in society of women that don't perform motherhood, the way that we think that they should. And I do think it's actually a really, really fantastic film. I need to watch it again, but I think you can watch it first, be spooked, watch it again and be like, wow, this is actually stunning. Yeah, Babaduke. Queer icon, excellent social commentary on motherhood. What can't you do? I'm going to take word for it.

Model, author, podcaster, Emily Ratchaskowski, wrote an essay for the cut last month on her experience of dating as a single mother. The piece was titled, Motherfucker. After becoming a single mom, I began compulsively dating in order to figure out what kind of woman I wanted to be. In the piece, she describes how she pivoted from being someone who had intentionally kept her body count numbers low. Your body count is the amount of people that you sat with. If you're not down with the kids, before she got married as a precaution to be a good girl in inverted commas, someone that was worth marrying and not leaving. But after she got divorced and became a single mother, which was essentially the thing that she'd always feared when she was growing up,

This all changed and she decided to start having casual hookups for the first time in her life. She also explores the harsh stigma against single divorced mothers. In response to the pity, she preempted from people. She adopted this kind of like villain, vix and persona while dating. She wrote, I decided to fuck my way into a new kind of woman. I wanted to destroy the Madonna, the special girl I'd worked so hard to be before an eight-pound baby had torn my vagina into and replace her with the whore. But she was surprised by how much men were turned to.

on by motherhood. At a party, someone who knows lots of famous single woman, consoled her. Rachikowsky wrote, at the time, her comment felt monumental, like she was addressing the exact thing no one wanted to say, but that I've been so scared of, that as a single mother, I was unlovable, used up and discarded. I soon came to find out that it was quite the opposite of they don't care. In fact, they liked it. There were many men who experienced the loneliness that comes with years of selfishness. They were particularly attracted to the idea that being a parent meant self-sacrifice was a given in my life. Did they want me as their mummy? Maybe. The narrative thrust of the piece is an experience with a man she dubs elder millennial. According to her male friends, he's ugly, he's also

prone to making weird jokes and crucially is into dirty talk. They's not hooking up and Emily really isn't into it, or him calling her a slut and streetwalker during sex, but keeps it going to have the upper hand. He senses this power imbalance and says he loves her in three weeks. It continues, and she describes the bizarre dynamic of having mid-sex with a guy she barely likes, and leaving at night to then go back to relieve the nanny so that she can do mornings with her child. She also describes this profound experience with her divorce lawyer who tells her she is actually brave for leaving her marriage and then she manages to reframe the experience of being a single mother, not as pathetic and not having been left, but as something that she decided

to choose for herself and she chose herself rather than a man. So she decides to work up the courage to tell elder millennial that she's not into the dirty talk and then he has a really classic kind of chat GPT style answer where he says, says, that's okay, it's only fun if we both enjoy it. But then they do sleep together again after this. And he slaps her and says, I didn't ask your feedback bitch. And that is how the piece ends. Woof. Woof indeed. Then literally dogs just started barking outside. I can hear that. Oh my gosh. I sent this piece to both of you because initially I was quite alarmed by the imagery. And I think that we could maybe start off by talking about that. So the kind of accompanying imagery

all this piece in the cut is Emily wearing kind of like a zip top that's like quite unzipped with a doll baby on her breast as if it's breastfeeding. And there were a lot of comments, because I went to the comments immediately to check and I thought, oh, something inside me went, oh, I don't know how I feel about this because they were sexualized images. She's kind of like holding a martini glass and she's got the baby on her breast and she looks very glamorous and gorgeous. Then you read the piece and you think, oh, there is something like harmonious going on between these pictures and the story that she's telling. But I wondered if you guys had any thoughts on the imagery because I think they have gone pretty viral. I'm sure a lot of

of people will have seen them even if they maybe haven't read the piece. Yeah, I mean, I do think the images were quite provocative and it makes a bit more sense when you read the piece because it is about the fetishization of mothers and her experience in the dating ball as a mother. I still think they are just provocative images, to be honest. Like, I do think there is an element of her playing into the trope of sexualizing, breastfeeding. And I don't really have a, oh, that is outrageous and it makes me angry or I have a good for her for doing that. That's empowering. I just think they are straight up provocative images and I think she knows what she's doing with them and I think that's that's it. To me it just felt like a like a non-issue. It felt like a non-issue wrap this up.

I can see why thinking more deeply on it, someone might have felt a type of way considering how breastfeeding already sits in the public imagination and women who are sexualized, not sexualized against their will and also just including baby and baby imagery. But because it's a doll, I was a little bit like, ah, it's just a little bit of a kind of artistic flourish. I wasn't too bothered by it, but I can see, I can definitely see that. I have been more. aware of the critique of the piece itself. And a lot of people are not really fall, not falling for it. It sounds like I'm on that side, but not really buying it as useful commentary on motherhood and sexuality because it is very particular lens that she's writing through because she is Emerita,

rather than most other women. And a lot of people saying the pieces she's kind of laughing as a kind of single mother when in reality she's very wealthy and she's a co-parent and she doesn't have those same concerns, you know, the fact that she's wondering like, am I going to be a villain? a vixen or what kind of sex am I going to have versus like how am we going to get child support? How am we going to pay for my child? People are not, a lot of people are unable to enjoy it for that reason and I've seen a lot of that criticism versus the baby doll on the titty.

It's such a good point about like, is this relatable to other mothers? And maybe a question we need to ask is like, does it need to be? Is she just kind of memorizing like her experience? But I think the bit that was quite interesting thing to pick out on was, is it true maybe men do see women who are mothers as having a natural propensity to be caring? and to be used to sort of like forning over someone, to be used to being subservient. I think that was quite an interesting thread to tug at

and maybe that is more, could be applied more widely to other women who do find themselves in this situation. But you're so right that most women, most women don't look like Emily Raskowski. Most women don't have nannies. And most women can't go out and dates and get drunk when they're a single mother.

Like even that part of it is so stripped away from what like single motherhood would mean to most other women. Like you kind of imagine just an incredible amount of work. Labor looking after this child, increased amount of money. that you need exhaustion, probably not showering, probably not washing her hair, probably walking around with sick on you, as opposed to going to like really cool New York downtown bars

in a slightly little outfit. But I did enjoy the piece, but I do that kind of writing. It is undeniably a privilege to have sexual experimentation so close to having a child. And that's not to shame her. It just is a privilege. I think so many mothers just aren't even able to explore that side of themselves in the way that she is able to when they are a single parent because of the exact things you said access to child care, the access to being able to offset some of the responsibilities and the time and being able to have that availability is a privilege. And it isn't something that she needs to do two paragraphs, three paragraphs of apologising for. I don't think that that's fair for her to do that. I think it is just an understandable element of the piece.

And I think framing it as people have this projection of single mothers as being pathetic, you know, they get left, things like that. I found quite interesting. because I don't discount that at all, but I'm really surprised that she included that in her piece, because being in this cosmopolitan city of New York, and I think of somebody like Julia Fox, who I imagine is probably somewhere around in her circles, I'm just, I'm surprised that she would feel that about herself because she's surrounded by so many celebrities and, like, hot people where single parenthood is a thing. And I totally get that these things are so deep-rooted because it's not even just about what you see and the culture around you. They're about years of taboo and projections and your parents' projections and cultural teachings and things like that about what a good woman looks like.

But I think I was surprised that she was contending with that just because there's so much around her that is like cool single parenthood in Bohemian New York. And I also think the other thing that I struggled with in the piece is she's talking about what kind of woman do I want to be, but it's all through the framing of dating and men and these kind of personas that she'll take on such as maybe I'm a vixen and it's all to do with the men that she can discount or even for. post-divorce understandably, but still this feeling of having been left. I've seen quite a lot of criticism of the piece, which is all of her frameworks are to do with the value and the perception and the kind of interest of men, rather than post-divorce, her thinking, what kind of woman do I want to be, regardless of the male gaze? And I think that is something that's come up a few times in her work, which people really struggle with.

People did say that about her book as well, that there was a critique to be made about the lens. Yeah. And beforehand, that didn't really come front and centre in her. writing for me. But with this piece, I did really notice it, I have to say. She's a human being, but also we have to engage with her work critically, which is why I have to say that. But you know what, I mean, there's so much to say. And I definitely want to go back, circle back to what Anoni, you were saying about, like, mothers actually being attractive to certain kind of men because they think, right, built in mummy figure. I was thinking, what must

it be like for Emily Rataskowski to date? Because actually, look, the way that men respond to her, I mean, Anonian, you and I've been in, when we met for the first time, we were in the same room as her. And I was like, God, I'm no better than a man. Of course I am. I was like, oh my gosh, she is really startlingly beautiful. She's also powerful of rich. Men, I think we've said before it, men's erotic attention is commanded. Their sexual antenna go up, not just in response to a beautiful woman, but also in response to how other men perceive her.

And Emily Rachoskowski has, for a long time sat at the pinnacle of what men think is attractive. It's fueled. Men's attraction is fueled by what other men think. Like, to be straight as a man is truly a homoerotic enterprise. We've said it before. But M. Rattar has been the hot woman, the perfect woman. Men think that she was crafted in the lab just to please. So I do think actually dating for her is probably really shit because she can't date in the world as a normal person.

She's been a highly sexualized figure for such a long time. It probably maybe that is the lens that she's writing through because we have forced her into that position. I don't know. Yeah, no, I do agree. And I also think there's a certain, like we hear so much about what men think about women and like kind of her positioning where she's come from with that bloodlines video to then writing her book, my body, which again, yeah, I do remember the criticism. But I do remember really, really enjoying it. And when I met her, when I was with Best, she was actually very nice. But I think that there's also a specific thing about her work because she's so sexualized and she's so objectified.

I think that a lot of men would literally see her as almost like a blowup doll rather than like a real human woman. And so I think that it must be difficult to be able to sense whether or not men are actually interested in her because they think she's interesting or clever. And like a lot of her work, I feel like is her trying to prove that she is clever. And I do think that has been proved whether or not men are engaging with her book. and the writing that she does, I do not know. But to go back to what you said, which I thought was really interesting about, she lives in this city where single motherhood is not a stranger to her. There are other women doing it, and it's less stigmatized than it was.

I think that because of the fact that you then went on Thailand, like she does have, in her mind's eye, this male gaze, her choices around her sexuality. I was really surprised, but I think she did write about my body, so I must have known, but that body count thing, that she made this really calculated decision to not have many sexual partners so that people, couldn't look at her body, look at what she looks like, and be like, oh, she's a slut because she literally could say,

well, I barely slept with anyone. That to me is such a prison and really sad that you couldn't enjoy your own pleasure, couldn't have the freedoms of enjoying the sexuality, be promiscuous if you wanted to, because you felt like by doing it, you would in some way underserve yourself or create some scenario that you don't want to be in.

So I think that's why the single motherhood thing, it's, I guess she feels like, oh, I'm becoming this object, this idea, this concept of a woman that I've been trying to... It's interesting because she's a bit like a Kardashian in that way where she like, she fights against it. And then she really heavily plays into it, which is kind of what the imagery did as well. So she is a conflicting character because she, I do feel confused by her. And yet it is interesting that it was through the framework of like what kind of woman I'm going to be. But I think that is because she probably, it's inescapable for her.

Like her and the male gaze are, I just can't ever imagine her ever being able to separate herself from that. So it's probably like really hard to see, be like what kind of woman do I want to be and dismantle the framework of her being like this. sexual goddess. Yeah, it does feel like a prison. How would you even go on a normal date if you are her? And it's not like she has it the worst. Obviously, she does not have it the worst. But it also is an indescribable unique experience, which is kind of fascinating. If you were Emerita and you went on a date and you were looking for long-term partnership, somebody who saw your name would be bringing so much projection to that first date, so much undeniable baggage that you would have no idea about and you have to contend with that every single time. Even her name is beyond herself,

let alone her public image and her likeness, whatever, which she spoke about in that very viral cut piece, about those nudes that a photographer took of her right from the beginning and she did that amazing, interesting essay about how her image is never really her own anymore. Even just the projection of going on a date with her would be crazy. The angle she goes in on is how single mothers are fetishized while dating. And people said, is that the thrust of the piece really? Or is it just her experience of being Enrata whilst dating,

which is a difficulty of its own? is this piece really about being a single mother or is it about being a celebrity and being a sex icon and also having an association like hers and trying to start from scratch? It's such a good question as well. I do feel like she needs to be in conversation with someone on this issue. I was reading there was a Reddit thread on this and people were kind of doing, kind of taking the same line that you have and asking the questions like, could she have the insight needed to square this off or she is a uniquely attractive proposition for a lot of eligible men? because not only is she a single mother and the fetishising of their caregiving element, but also like she's loaded.

I saw someone right, she talks about her fear of being a single mom. It's not because they're so pathetic and undesirable as she implies. People fear single parenthood because it's so often financially precarious, time consuming and grueling. She is extremely privileged, can afford nanny's daycare. I do, I think the word for this, the whole thing, is prison. It's a prison of perspective, which all of us are in to some degree, but this is a very unique one. It's literally a gilder cage because, as you say, it's so funny to think that we're talking about her. and being like, God, it's difficult, because obviously we have,

we now understand this idea of like pretty privilege that the things are easier, but she's almost like on the sharpest, pointiest end of that to the point where it almost becomes like a curse. It's almost like it's such a specific situation that it almost doesn't bear comparing to other people. Like it's almost like there is no world in which you can compare Emera to single motherhood to the general person's experience of single motherhood. And that's true to some extent with celebrities.

But I think she is a really uniquely interesting in this moment in time. And there are other women who are set. as much as her, but I guess so much of her conversation is both that push and pull towards trying to be seen as de-sexualized and then leaning into sexualized image. And so it's like, obviously nothing happens in a vacuum, almost her experiences do. But I do think that men, when she writes about men, kind of looking at her or looking at single moms, it's like, oh my God, the skills that you have grown to look after your children could be used for my gain to receive the care. Oh, my God, it gave me such the shivers. I'm not even a mother and several men have tried to become my son.

Like, I'm not giving maternal provider, but like men have tried to come onto my wing in a way that I'm like, oh, God, tried to put me in that role. So I do think that's, that is very interesting commentary. But I also thought what a very good piece of this is is the idea that she been becoming a mother. It means you are actually more picky because she's no longer a person like going through life, just think about her own need. She's got a son. She loves her son so much. She's like, she writes something like, she's like, he doesn't have, you know, anything that I really need. The joy I get from looking after my son is like the.

ultimate pleasure. I don't want anything from him anymore. And it's like such a fascinating concept when I think like being single, being child free, the minute I hit 30 or 31, thereabouts, when my love for myself became the biggest thing, my ability to be like indifferent to unserious and like emotionally illiquate men was enormous. Before I be like, oh, my God, he doesn't like me. Now I'm like, oh, he doesn't like me. Go away slug. Do you know what I mean? It's obviously it's so different. It sounds sort of similar though. It's like her baby as a baby, but sometimes you are your own baby. I have become my own baby and I think in that respect, me and Emerita have got something in common. I guess even though there is back to a short piece, I think it does show that we have

moved to a different space, even though people are across about it, where I know that that person's retaliation about her depiction of single motherhood being this one thing. It is also true that there was a time when people, and it still happens, especially in cell cultures in the atmosphere, where mothers are that concept of over the hill, they're unlovable, they're unlikable, they're unfuckable. Like, she is kind of the manifestation of the fact that motherhood doesn't have to be a defining, de-sexualising, kind of make you vanish into being suddenly not someone that someone's interested in. I do think that is something fascinating because I remember when I was younger, I think like, oh, when you become a mum, that kind of all stops.

Like, you just aren't the woman that you were before. And that I think in the eyes the society has changed. Like, I don't think this piece by Emily Ratikowski could have existed to like a bit of fanfare, but not really anything. Like, if this came out in the 90s or like the naughties, I can't imagine what the reaction. would have been. And I think that's not the thing that people are pissed off about. People are pissed off about all manner of other things in the piece. So I think that's a kind of, if I'm going to do toxic positivity, kind of an amazing temperature check of the fact that at least on the cuts

demographic, wherever this piece has gone, most rational people who are not in cells or freaks are not at all gasping at the fact that she's a single mother having casual sex. They're gasping at the fact that there's like all these other things they're pissed off about in the piece. And I know that she's writing about having bad sex in this piece, but I also do think from someone who said, you know, I was really worried. I slept with eight people, all of whom I was either living with, in serious relationships with or, you know, was falling in love with, to now being like, now I'm going to tell you in the cut in an essay that thousands of people read about a blowjob I gave, I kind of go, yeah, go on, girl. Yeah, there's stuff in there. Do you think she's going to write

another book? Because I looked at the end and I was like, oh, my God, it felt, is this from something, but I couldn't, surely she's got another book coming, maybe about motherhood. I could see that, Yeah. Either that or she's working, I'm sure she must be working on scripts or she's definitely, she's definitely got a storytelling something coming. Her and Lena Dunham are working on a film together about post-divorce, I believe. Watch this base. So if motherhood wasn't hard enough, apparently there is another dimension to it all,

aka motherhood branding. In May, Jessica Roy wrote a piece for the New York Times titled, What's Your Mom Aesthetic? In it, she describes the rise of mum labels and online identities. She writes, In a world where some babies have Instagram handles before they're even born, deciding how you want to portray yourself as a parent online has become, for some, almost as important as parenting itself. On TikTok, content creators have been coining terms for their different approaches,

turning motherhood into one more aesthetic to brand, while also giving themselves a creative escape from the drudgery of parenthood. Here's a breakdown of the different aesthetic she describes. First up is Butter Mum. They apparently reject us. culture and aim to curate a vibrant 90-style life for their children, such as analog toys and primary colours. A cosy mum, she writes, might coordinate sweater sets with her newborn and prioritise Montessori-style practical play, which I had to look this up, so anyone who didn't know,

is a style of children's play which incorporates tactile materials to build real-life skills rather than relying on traditional grading or formal lecturing. In the piece, there's also reference to Wimcical Mum, Tuscan Mum and Clean Girl Mom. Roy also speaks to content creator Haley Dorosh, who identified the sad beige mom trend. This is essentially lots of children looking quite forlorn, playing with wooden bricks and beige toys. Dorosh summarised that the images were meant to suggest the idea that your child will be wise beyond their years if they play with this toy.

But the way it translated was they just looked really sad. She then made a TikTok account dedicated to satirising this. content. She thinks parenting aesthetics are just a way parents reveal their class and beliefs. But for New Yorker Culture Critic and new father, Kyle Chica, who Roy also interviews for the piece, these markers are something slightly different. He said, babies are representatives of our personal taste since they can't make any decisions for themselves. So I think we outfit them with the things we aspire to the way people also fancy up their dogs. Anoni, as a possessor of gorgeous fancy dog, do you agree or disagree? I, I mean,

Astrid does wear a leper print harness every single day. And because I'm invariably always wearing leper print, someone always comments like, oh my God, you're matching. And I'm like, we actually just both wear leper print every day. So it's not kind of on purpose. I thought this was so fascinating this piece because I can't wait to never post my child online. I don't even know if I want to tell anyone their name. I think what you will find out is if I have a bump, I do like the idea of brain bump

havers. But beyond that, I don't want to have any kind of aesthetic to my parenting. and I can see how it kind of happens by accident, but it's always for me at the point when something becomes cannibalized into a trend and labelled that I can't believe that then people kind of apply to it. I don't mind if it's a joke, like The Tomato Girl, it's like stupid. But I think it's very strange.

I saw one on Twitter the other day that was like the 90s mom aesthetic, but all the images are always like AI kind of generated very unrealistic. And what does it even mean? Like the weird thing is I can intuitively understand what these aesthetics are portraying. But again, to go back a bit to like the Emerald. one. Who's got time for this? Aren't you just trying to do your best? I think I would be really focused on just trying to help them with their speech development and sensory play and like

emotional learning and I would be less fuss about fitting and aesthetic. But hey, maybe I'll be one of those butter moms. I know what you mean. I just firstly I don't get parenting content. So I was really surprised at how detailed this is. And then I thought for a second, I was like, okay, there's clean girl, tomato, summer, you know, like glazed donut, this, that and the other makeup trends. I guess it's no wonder that. that parenting has also got all of these kind of nonsense identifiers, brands, marketing aesthetics all over the shop as well. I just think it sounds like so much work. Does any of it really matter? Does like, does any of it really matter at the end of the day? Like being an identifier of a certain

trend of parenthood. The ones I do get and the ones I find really interesting are the gentle parenting trends and all those types of styles of parenting. Those I find fascinating. But I just wonder, will it really matter having an aesthetic to your parenthood or your parenting style 10 years down the line? It just sounds like another thing to stress about. Is that really harsh? No, I think that's bang on. I also think the way that trends do change so rapidly. Imagine just being like, sorry kids, we'll change aesthetics again. Last week I was a dental mom. This week, I'm an almond mom. Next week or maybe be a butter mom. Like, it's just too confusing. I don't even know what Tuscan mum is and I sort of zoned out when we were talking about it. I think my brain rejects that I would ever need to learn what this was. And I do think they're actually just not real.

I believe that people identify themselves that way and they identify other people that way, but I actually don't believe it's anything more than performing for the internet. I think if you turn the internet off, everyone is just motherhood in their own best effort. So many like changing decisions, attitudes, circumstances, like you cannot, you cannot boil it down to just an epithet that begins when that baby is born slash conceived and when they go off, you know, into the big bad world. Like, I just think it's a limit as well on people's ability to just like parent to the best of their abilities. if you kind of go, oh, does this decision make sense for me, a butter mom?

And it's like, it doesn't matter. It's not real. You know what I mean? Like, I did actually quite like the idea of a butter mom as like the anti-Armond mum, though, because Armourn Mums are real and I'm scared of them. Yeah, Armourne Mum is so, I just got earlier, like a compilation video of all the things that Yolanda Hadid. Yolanda Hadid had said to the girls over the years.

And I was like, oh, my God, it's awful. But I mean, now I feel like I'm being a cow, because whatever, if you're an amazing mum and you want to, even if you're not an amazing mom, you're doing a great job. And it's hard enough. and you do associate yourself. I don't want to feel like I'm shitting on anyone. Maybe this brings people joy. But I guess it is because, like, you Beth,

I think of, I imagine my own parenthood, if that comes, if that happens, as a very offline experience, in which case, none of this, all of this ceases to matter. I do remember when I was younger, thinking like, oh, I can't bear the idea of having loads of toys in my house.

And I imagine my house. And I do remember thinking maybe I'll get those, like, wooden toys, everything looks nice. Then I got older and I thought about it, and you learn a way that the way that children really relate to colors, especially like primary colors when they're little and they need it. And I really, remember, I think it was weirdly Sophie Alice Bexter. It might have been on table manners or something,

talking about how her children have white walls in their bedrooms, they're just allowed to draw on them because you can paint, she was like, you can just paint over a wall. And I was like, oh my God, my dream as a child was just to be able to colour in on the walls. So it's stuff like that that I really take inspiration from. It's like, how can you give your child like the biggest creative outlet, make them enjoy life, make them feel like it's pleasure and play and whatever else. Like those kind of things usually actually go in opposition of an aesthetic. It's actually about like let them splat their food on the floor because they've got to find out. Like, they're just constantly learning.

So everything has to be anti-order, anti-whatever when it comes to kids. But I guess it is that online thing. And in a way it does make me feel sad because I think that it's part of the influence of world the way that it works is you have to have a thing to sell people on, you have to have to have an idea,

you have to have a niche, you have to have something people keep coming back to. And so like, if you come up with this idea, butter mom, whatever, and then people are like, oh, I quite like the idea of that. And then you'll keep pushing it and posting about it. Then other people start doing it. And it might even have just been that that creator's done it

purely as an angle to get eyes on them. But then it kind of, mutates and manifests and becomes this real life thing that real life mothers who aren't influences who aren't content creators feel a pressure that they have to do and I hope I'm not being snarky but I just this kind of thing it does it feels it's just very dystopian I think yeah I don't think the way you spoke about that I think was very fair and it's very I think it's very sympathetic because it's understandable seeing all of this stuff online why it becomes attractive I think what your point is of what I want to get to as well as just to release the

pressure to do that. This is something that is understandable if you're an influencer and it's why content creators have these aesthetics and these brands because that is their livelihood. That is the way that they get attention on their pages and it's understandable. But it's not for average folk like me to put the pressure on myself to do that and to curate the perfect parenthood for Instagram because I just, I don't need to do that. And I guess that's the point of what you're saying. Also, you mentioned almond mum, just in case somebody doesn't know what that means. An almond mum is basically a term that was coined for parents who project their own kind of eating disorders onto their children. I guess the idea is there's this kind of like colloquialism of people who have

disordered eating, you know, like counting their almonds. So that's where almond mum came from. Just in case anyone didn't know. I just think as well, it kind of feels very AI-e to me. Not only the kind of imagery that is associated with these aesthetics, but the idea that we're all kind of just like shrinking and like making our lives look buttery or making them look bland or making them look beigey. It's almost like we're living in an AI kind of defined world. Does that make sense? It's like rather than colouring out the lines or living and expressing

and just kind of existing as humans, we're almost like following the algorithm and kind of living in these contained ways and like these perfect font type ways and like trying to make ourselves more like an AI type aesthetic. It just, it feels very inhuman. And I don't. like that side of it. As you were talking, I was literally thinking it feels like taste off again. It's like collecting the markets of something rather than just living the markets. Because I mean, all the time spent curating is time not spent figuring out what your kids want to do. And it's, you know, it's balance above all. Like I hate that we all have to have some kind of brandable identity at all moments. But I also see how for a lot of moms, maybe this is an effort

to retain identity at a time when society is obviously being so insistent that you're one thing, you're a mother now. And what that means we've decided for you. And it's maybe saying like, no, I am a mother. But that's not. not a monolith. There are so many different ways to be a mother, including these headings that we've assigned ourselves. I do understand that, and especially in the case of like your parenting style or even the aesthetic of your children's childhood, I understand that degree of wanting to control it and make sure it's really, you know, buttery and brilliant and joyful old 90s or whatever. Ultimately, it is influenced by the world around you. There's only so much

that you can control. Like, I remembered like the aesthetic of my childhood was literally just growing up in the 90s. It was the furniture my parents could afford. It was the things that could afford to do and it was us basically decide you know choose your own adventure it was us cubbed in mud it was us in the garden having like dug a hole and gotten into it in our pants it was those things and i do think there's an element of wanting things to look a certain way that means you just don't get the magic of that but i mean as always like especially speaking on motherhood we're not going to be the authorities on this if anyone does want to disagree we so welcome that because we aren't you know living that i keep flip flip flopping between it's not that deep if a mom sees something and she's like oh i am a butter mom

when she wants to call herself that, that's fine. I think where it, then I flip-flop to be going back to that piece, I keep thinking about recently, which is like, actually, we do need to be a snob. Is there's a danger in over-identifying with this trend that is exactly what you said, Beth, which is, like, creating the markers of this thing, but not actually, like, living that life. It's like, you could be a muddy mom one day, and then maybe you've got a matching outfit with your kid the next day, but it doesn't mean that you're, like, you have to do all of those

things, like, you might have, this is where I think, maybe it's just my personality type of the way that I look at the world, but I find it's so restrictive. It's probably something that in each of those categories of mother, I would apply through all of my learnings and things that I've had to unlearn and my experiences. And as Philip Larkin famously said, you'll fuck your kids up no matter what you do. Like we're all going to, there's going to be new and innovative ways that we fucked our kids up that we can't even imagine right now. There's going to be the book you wish your parents had read volume 54 by the time our kids are 10 and we'll be like, oh my God, whatever type of parenting style like you were saying return about like gentle parenting or whatever, which now is also getting, I think people are going, you've been too, you've been too gentle. you've been too gentle and now your kids are running riot. Commissive parenting.

There is only, you can really only do your best. And if this brings solace to mothers or if they enjoy it in some way or it brings them happiness or it's like distracting or it like just makes your day feel better, then that's absolutely great. But I just don't want it to be another tool with which to shame people who can't live up to an aesthetic or who think that motherhood should have an aesthetic. I think an aesthetic will be born like you said Beth, just from your household, from the love that you have with your partner, from the things that you, the hobbies that you have

and the things that you, without even noticing, pass on to your kids and stuff that they then take into the playground and share with their friends. Like, your motherhood will have its own personality, just like you have your own personality. We've got to stop with trends. I just can't. We would be out of the job there, but maybe that's for the best. I want our podcast to be obsolete. That would be perfect. Just so the internet's unplugged and then we don't need to do this.

Oh, my God. Imagine we get to finish and we're like, nothing is content. Oh my God. I mean, that would be. We're done. That would actually be the jury. That is the dream, but we have to have made a million pounds before that happens. So keep going, guys.

999,95 pounds to go. Could ChatGBT be the dream co-parent? You will know our stance on AI, so I'm going to say no. But a wide piece by E.J. Dixon explores how it's becoming a big trend with a number of women becoming AI momfluences online. So in the piece, we meet Lillian Schmidt, who can't get her daughter to sleep, despite all of the classic advice of blackout curtains, white noise machines, or giving her a massage. On a rogue whim tries chat GPT, and AI suggests a seemingly bizarre thing, which is give her daughter more stimulation. This went against every single thing she knew, but she did it and it worked. Lillian started an Instagram account evangelising about it, being a perfect co-parent, and her follow account literally swelled to 27,000 people in just three weeks.

weeks. She then made her own custom GPT called co-parent and started selling access to it for $37 on her website. Welcome a new wave of mum influencers promoting that mothers use the technology to help ensure that you never forget sunscreen or an appointment for your child. But the writer asks, where are the dads or other human co-parents in this scenario? Dixon writes, this is reflective of reality. Moms assume the vast majority of the physical and mental labour in US households with a 2032 Department of Labor survey finding that employed mothers spend an extra 13.5 hours per week and an average of 12.5 hours per week on childcare, a 40% increase from 1975. By and large, even though fathers are helping more, women still take on the lion's share of household chores and childcare

in heterosexual relationships. At the same time, women are 20% less likely, according to a 2025 study, to use generative AI in their everyday lives than men are. This discrepancy is known as the gender AI gap. In April, Reese Witherspoon also went viral for an Instagram post in which she said the tech would make our everyday lives easier and better, partly leading to the cart writing a piece titles, The Girl Bossification of AI. Sarah Dooley, a former tech consultant for brands like Visa, started using generative AI in 2023 to make up toothbrushing songs for her three-year-old daughters and to write notes to her babysitter. She started hosting in-person small group for moms to teach them how to use generative AI to delegate household tasks, leading to her quitting.

her job and starting her brand, the AI Empowered Mom. She now works full-time doing consulting for companies to teach women how to use AI and has a book called The AI Empowered Family coming out next year. She and Schmidt regularly get angry comments about how they're promoting a tech that has huge environmental impacts and is positioned to put nearly 15% of the workforce at risk of unemployment according to one projection. There's also the very real risk posed by generative AI on children's development and mental health, Dixon writes. So she ends the piece trying to it herself, but feels so depressed because she's realizing that she's even been put in that position at all, writing, as much as technology can help to alleviate the mental load, it does

nothing to eliminate the fact that women still assume that responsibility to begin with. Learning to use AI to make my life easier struck me as just another item to add to my already ballooning to-do list without addressing any of the underlying issues that make that list as long as it is to begin with. As LeBlanc, Godfrey puts it, these tools were built for people with spare time. And guess what? Moms don't have any. So I was really surprised to read this piece. It was such an interesting dive into the new kind of frontier of AI for parents, which is all of the kind of admin and the childcare load, administrative load in particular, the AI can help with. It makes total sense reading that because I guess that is a lot of the ways that people are using

it in businesses. But I was super depressed just to see, I guess, how it's being framed as an empowerment tool, it does feel like, again, the onus has been put on mums to just use AI to offload a lot of struggles and structural issues they face being a default parent. And I feel like we're just plastering up holes in society with AI without really questioning or diving or interrogating or solving the real issues for why this is being used. Don't get your pitch balls out with me because I do have caveats. But this, in terms of like very beginning issue where Lillian Schmidt couldn't get her daughter to work and she asked Chachipti and it gave her a solution Do you know what? I think, I think that's a fair application of chat TPT. If you haven't been given that information anywhere else, it's like a one-off thing. And actually, Google is unusable. I, every time I search something, I have to go down like five listings before I get to the actual website because everything, the competitors for whatever it is I'm looking for have like advertised their thing above it. So like finding information online I do think is harder. People have started to use the shortcut of using AI. I don't feel as angry about it as I did before purely because I think actually everything has got worse.

because everyone's got so reliant on it. So it doesn't shock me and I don't feel as angry. I don't agree, though, then with that Lillian Schmidt selling a $37 her own chat chit, that to me, I'm like, that's just a bit annoying. I don't like that. It feels like shilling. And it also feels like that is really taking the thinking out of hands. I think it's that thing when it's like, you have to know this about this.

And it's like sometimes some things are intuitive. I think we can actually ruin ourselves having shortcuts that are too easy to get to. The problem with this whole thing is that as much as I don't like it, it's so not going to be something that's going to be fixed in the way that I would like it to be fixed, aka like better maternal health care, more midwife visits, more money, more funding for parents, more third spaces, more childcare available, better parenting from fathers, like the things that would need to be put in place for mothers to be fully supported in this environment, in this world, I just don't know at what point until Mam Dani is president of the universe.

I don't know when those things are going to happen. So as much as I don't like it, I also am always in favour of mothers getting a bit of a break. And actually just at the top there you said getting her daughter to work you meant to get her daughter to sleep just in case anyone No get that girl a job Sorry I did What job baby do you?

I didn't I meant to sleep I am I need to sleep No she meant work of course she meant work I got it so wild because I actually do agree I was reading this I was like God it's such a tough one And someone that is so so sceptical of AI and so angry about all the you know terrified of AI but also just angry about it

I think it's such a really impossible for me to criticise a mother using AI in a position where really she has got no other choice because we do know so many fathers do not do their share of the work and that's a separate issue. In many cases, they're starved in the socialisation that would make it possible. In many cases, it's a really deeper issue, whatever. But still, it goes on. Mother's really stretched. Parenting is often just about survival.

And I do think in this like really castrapped atomized world, I cannot sit here child free and say, you shouldn't really be doing that, my love. That's bad of the environment. Like, that is, I'm not the one in that situation where I'm raising a child without. out proper resources. I think it's such an indictment of marriage, heterosexual marriage and parenting and modern society that they even need it. Like I know a lot of people who would never use chapter BT for like creative stuff, even like life admin and stuff like that. But when it comes to babies, and actually even you and only talked to the podcast, like when Astrid wasn't feeling well,

or you thought she wasn't well, it was a really quick way to sort through information fast because Google is so shoddy. So you can kind of act and think fast. And I do, I think with a young baby, the same is true, you're going to use it. If other resources fall flat, you're going to, you're going to use it. I would always counsel people against relying on it as if it were a doctor because it hallucinates and whatever else. But in terms of information finding, and if you don't have another parent to go, this is going on, I don't have time to catch you up, you should know. You do the laborer research, call the doctor, whatever else. You do the Googling, read the sleep book. If there's not a partner to do that, what are you meant to do? I just, I do find it really scummy that people are making businesses out of it.

And like, I think the framing of it being an empowerment tool really pisses me off. It's not an empowerment tool. It's like a desperation tool because people are in this position. That's my stance. I would never, ever, ever, ever shame a parent or a mother for using it. I just, the business and the cottage industry from it really boils my blood. I do feel like it is scummy. I'm sorry.

Like, is that really harsh? I just think charging money for it when these are tools that are accessible to everyone. And framing it as if you need this insider knowledge to know how to use them effectively, I think it's bullshit. I don't think that's true. Also, it's like the other thing if we forget how much we are atomized and isolated

and how many people that we've spoken about so many times but they're not living in the same city or even country as their parents. Like they don't have their mother nearby to tell them like, oh my God, when this happens.

Or I saw a video of a baby the other day on Instagram and someone was like, oh, they're dancing and everyone in the comments like they're having an epileptic fit and then the parent then had to be like because they just didn't know. There's just so many like wild ways

where the internet is kind of like in a way it can be. be useful and that's like I don't think anyone should ever post their child of mine but in that instance I was like thank God that they like misinformedly did share that because they obviously didn't have the education to know that and I don't know if I mean I'm sure that there's the other side of things which is that like on average like we are living longer and we are healthier and the world is kind of better depending on how you cut it up metrically like things are kind of better so it's not that necessarily we're worse parents if anything it's just that we know how many

things can go wrong people are much more vigilant as parents and so your threshold of how much stuff looking out for is really, really high. And so I guess people maybe do have a bigger appetite to be super, super on it when it comes to parenting, which is maybe different from what previous generations who would maybe let their kids, you know, eat something and just see what happens if they were sick and like wouldn't necessarily rush to any, wouldn't have Google to check. And there's like, there's a level of maybe parents were more relaxed, but maybe children were more impacted. Maybe people were getting sick more. It's like a complicated thing where the hyper awareness on the one hand is really good because it does mean people are able to catch sicknesses

sooner or illnesses because you're more aware, but then at the same time, that hypervigilance is put on to parents because we have access to the internet. And it's like, we should have known purely because we have access to like every single piece of information in the world at the tip of our fingers. But that's also a lot, especially when that is falling on the mother who is already doing all of the mental load and the childcare. I don't know. That was quite a garbled answer, but I just think it's a very complex picture to be a mother in this world. But it's also very much one of those things. It is perception based. So many people think that we do live in a way less safe world, but actually like things are vastly safe, especially in cities, but because it's all,

you know, 24-hour news cycle because of this social media panopticon, people will go, like, you can't go to London nowadays and you go, this is the safe, it's the same. We don't quite know who to believe. And so we're double-checking parenting. I mean, parenting has never been harder, in my opinion, because of what we've decided that motherhood is and has to be. It's like, well, you can't afford not to go to work, but actually you need to spend this much time watching your kids, like, you can't just kick them out to the street anymore and be like, I'll see you when I see you. I think it's just so difficult and I do, I can understand being like, well, I need a third part. I need another parent and if it's going to be chat to be T or it's going to be one of

these tools, maybe $37 doesn't feel that much of an expense. And I guess it is, it does feel like profiteering on a very real global desperation where parenting is harder than ever, people are less on, people are less sure than ever. It seems like people can get in trouble for sorts of things, you know, parenting wise that 20, 25 years ago were just normal, like leaving kids at home with the oldest, you know, with a 10-year-old would look after a five-year-old. And that would be like, well, of course. That's common sense. Now it's like, well, is that legal, but I've got a good work?

I just, I think it's such a shame that we have landed in a place where people are so ripe to receive these kind of tools. I remember seeing the reel from Reese Smith, Spoon, where she was really framing it as like this feminist thing, like women are being left behind because women are using chat chitipiti so much less. And I was like, no, this is the wrong thing. Yes, I understand what you're saying. In a world where we see that the only way out and through is through allowing this AI takeover to

happen, then yes, if women don't themselves get involved in it, then yes, there might be some sort of imbalance there. But it just frustrated me and upset me that she was obviously quite blinked to the fact that there is this secret third option, which is that we all try and actually say, no, we don't really want to use AI. We don't want AI to become so ubiquitous that there is no other way out. There's no other way of thinking. There's no other way of creating. And that actually will just fall short. And so I agree with you, that idea of AI being empowering. I don't think that is the right framework. I think because it exists and it's a tool and it's easy to use. If people need it to use it in certain scenarios, then I'm like,

of course, like, who are we to judge? And every, like, it's come so far from when we did those AI episodes, it's actually like impossible to imagine this place we were talking from then when it was a year ago. But yeah, I really don't like this idea of it being funneled to us through really quite influential voices like Reese Witherspoon and Mel Robbins as a call to action for women, as a feminist defense of our own selves to use AI. I just can't get my head around that framing. I also want to shout out Mel Robbins, who has done a lot of work in kind of gender washing, shall we say AI and saying it's an empowerment tool and really pushing women to use it. She is getting paid to promote co-pilot.

So that is a big explanation for why she is so pro AI. And it feels really griftery to me, to be completely honest with you. And I'm just going to say that ten toes down, she's getting paid to promote it and then is kind of using empowerment terms to suggest that women are getting left behind and they're allowing themselves to fall behind. behind in life by not using it. It's not honest, and it's not authentic. And to be honest, in the case of this kind of stuff, like it still leaves, I basically land where the peace lands. It leaves the mental load squarely

with the woman. She's the one integrating AI. She's the one learning how to maximize the efficiency, learning the tools, reading the books, watching the videos. It solves some problems in the same sense that, you know, the vacuum cleaner and the washing machine did in the middle of last century, but it still doesn't alter the structure of the household. It still tethers the woman to the household labor.

It's a gadget, but it's still your job to use it. And I just think to suggest that this makes things more equitable. It doesn't. It's just, yeah, it's just dressing it up. And I also, sorry, this is my last thing now, it is still that thing of once you put your troughs into a machine like this, it does make you distrust your own knowledge. And I'm not a mother, but from the mothers that I speak to and from wiser women than me who are parents, I do hear things like you do just know with certain things, not with everything. You're not a doctor. If you're not a doctor, you might be, you're not whatever. But in general,

you probably are good enough as you are. You do not have to check everything. Like, you probably understand your child better than you think. And so I think it can be used in times of need. But I definitely don't think, which I think might be happening, that it has to be applied. When you have any question, any doubt, anything, sometimes you as another, you know more than AI. In fact, I'd say most of the time. Thank you so much for listening this week. Before we go, just checking you've listened to our latest Everything in Conversation episode. If you enjoy the podcast, then please do leave us a rating and a review wherever you're listening

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