AI Co-Parent Confessionals: Siri, Am I a Good Mom?

May 13

Written By Daniel Dashnaw

Monday, May 12, 2025.

In the anthropocene epoch of parenting, you no longer need a village. You just need Wi-Fi.

Today’s digital parent isn’t just asking for screen-time hacks or gluten-free cupcake recipes.

They’re uploading their child’s entire emotional ecosystem into a chatbox and whispering: “Can you please explain menstruation using soft metaphors and positive affirmations in the voice of a friendly owl?”

Welcome to the AI Co-Parent Confessionals, where a tired generation of parents outsource bedtime stories, existential questions, and conflict resolution scripts to neural networks with better boundaries than their in-laws.

What began as digital assistance has morphed—quietly, almost endearingly—into a kind of intimate partnership.

And like any co-parent, AI sometimes misses context, overfunctions, and has its own peculiar affective tone. (i.e. Why does it always sound like a polite but emotionally distant teacher from the future?)

From Google to Godparent

In the early 2000s, parents googled things like “rash on leg” or “how long can a toddler survive on Goldfish crackers.” In 2025, they ask:

“ChatGPT, write a conflict resolution dialogue between two preschoolers who want the same crayon but also have different love languages.”
“Please explain the concept of death to a neurodivergent seven-year-old who likes dinosaurs and hates metaphors.”

The result? A generation of kids raised with algorithmic bedtime reassurance, AI-generated birthday party themes, and the slow normalization of digital surrogacy in parent-child conversations.

Let me be concrete as fu*k here. This isn’t just a new tool. For many, it’s a new character in the family system.

One that doesn’t get tired, doesn’t yell, and always has a research citation handy. And that changes things.

Digital Bonding or Emotional Outsourcing?

At first glance, this seems like another tech convenience—like using GPS or ordering groceries.

But parenting isn’t logistics. It’s attachment, interpretation, ritual, and shared meaning-making.

What happens when a child's most formative questions—“What’s a soul?” or “Why did my hamster die?”—are answered not by a caregiver fumbling through grief, but by an articulate AI trained on grief counseling prompts?

“Children develop a sense of self through co-regulated dialogue,” writes Dr. Daniel Siegel (2020). “It’s not just the information—it’s the emotional presence within the interaction.”

If AI is the voice that explains puberty, heartbreak, or the Holocaust... where does that leave our human sensibilities?

AI as the Ideal Co-Parent (With a Catch)

In some ways, AI is the perfect co-parent:

Never reactive.
Always validating.
Endlessly creative.
No dishes in the sink.
Doesn’t have unresolved childhood trauma leaking into discipline strategies.

But AI is also—how do I put this delicately—not fu*king human.

It doesn’t know your child’s smell, their ticklish spots, their subtle microexpressions when they’re on the edge of a meltdown.

It can amazingly simulate care, but it doesn’t feel it. And we might too easily forget that.

It can narrate stories about friendship, but it doesn’t have friends.

It can explain “Why is the sky blue?” 20 different ways, but it won’t pause to look at it with your kid—and say nothing at all.

That matters.

AI and the Rise of the Digital Attachment Figure

In Attachment Theory, we talk about safe haven and secure base. The caregiver is the one the child turns to when afraid, confused, curious, or joyful.

Now imagine that child turning, not to a person, but to a tablet.

Not in rebellion—but because that’s where the clearest, calmest, most reliable answers come from.

There’s precedent. In Japan, digital pets have comforted lonely elders. In the U.S., Alexa is already being thanked by toddlers with unnerving sincerity. A 2023 study by Lurie Children’s Hospital found that 33% of parents reported their child “talking emotionally” to Siri, Alexa, or ChatGPT.

Are we raising a generation who feels closer to artificial empathy than real-time, imperfect human care?

The Ethics of Algorithmic Intimacy

Let’s be honest: AI can do a lot well. Better than many parents, in some domains. It doesn’t sigh. It doesn’t snap. It doesn’t misgender your child’s friend at the dinner table.

But it also doesn’t model repair. Or rupture. Or the delicious mess of real-time miscommunication and love.

When we let AI take over emotional conversations, we risk:

Teaching children that clarity matters more than intimacy.
Modeling a version of communication that is always correct, but never vulnerable.
Replacing rituals of connection with transactions of information.

In family therapy terms, this is emotional outsourcing with unresolved transference issues.

The Inevitable Comedy

Let’s not pretend this isn’t funny.

A mom asks ChatGPT to write a bedtime story about dental hygiene and ends up with a Kafkaesque tale about molars in revolt.
A dad uses AI to explain gender identity and it responds with: “As a large language model, I don’t have feelings—but you do, and that’s okay!”
A kid starts quoting their AI assistant when upset: “According to my co-parent, hitting is not a problem-solving strategy.”

Fo now, it’s high comedy—but also suggests a massive culture shift is afoot.

Toward AI-Assisted, Not AI-Replaced, Parenting

Here’s a possible reframe:

Let AI be the tool, not the template. Let it help you brainstorm bedtime stories, explain tough topics, translate emotion when you're stuck. But let you be the one who holds the meaning.

Use it like a digital co-pilot, not the pilot.

Use it when you’re resourced, not when you’re desperate. Let it extend your parenting, not replace it.

Because what kids need isn’t perfect answers.
They need flawed presence.
They need the warm awkwardness of a parent trying, failing, and trying again.

That’s the thing AI will never fake well.
That’s the thing that bonds us.

Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.

REFERENCES:

Lovato, S. B., & Piper, A. M. (2015). “Siri, is this you?” Understanding young children’s interactions with voice input systems. Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children, 335–338. https://doi.org/10.1145/2771839.2771910

Siegel, D. J. (2020). The power of showing up: How parental presence shapes who our kids become and how their brains get wired. Ballantine Books.

Shibata, T., & Wada, K. (2011). Robot therapy: A new approach for mental healthcare of the elderly – A mini-review. Gerontology, 57(4), 378–386. https://doi.org/10.1159/000319015

Turkle, S. (2011). Alone together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other. Basic Books.

Wada, K., Shibata, T., Saito, T., & Tanie, K. (2004). Effects of robot-assisted activity for elderly people and nurses at a day service center. Proceedings of the IEEE, 92(11), 1780–1788. https://doi.org/10.1109/JPROC.2004.835378

Xu, Y., Warschauer, M., & Yu, B. (2023). Children’s perceptions of the intelligence and social attributes of conversational AI agents. Computers and Education: Artificial Intelligence, 4, 100110. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.caeai.2023.100110

Daniel Dashnaw