{"id":734460,"date":"2026-06-13T17:52:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T17:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/734460\/"},"modified":"2026-06-13T17:52:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T17:52:08","slug":"momfluencers-are-co-parenting-with-ai-is-it-better-than-a-man-arwa-mahdawi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/734460\/","title":{"rendered":"Momfluencers are co-parenting with AI. Is it better than a man? | Arwa Mahdawi"},"content":{"rendered":"

In honour of Pride I\u2019d like to share some important news: Being Straight is Great, Actually! This public service announcement is brought to you by the New York Times which, in an offering to the Ragebait Gods, published<\/a> an op-ed with that headline<\/a> on the eve of Pride month. It then changed the headline of the piece, which was written by a Playboy editor, to There\u2019s Nothing Wrong With Wanting Men. \u201cI\u2019m going to go out on a limb and say it,\u201d author Magdalene J Taylor bravely wrote. \u201cThere has still never been a better time in human history to happily and successfully pursue heterosexuality.\u201d<\/p>\n

A sincere congratulations to Ms Taylor for her successful pursuit of heterosexuality, and her brave dismantling of straw men. But, look, while I don\u2019t like to rain on anyone\u2019s (straight) parade, I do have a few little quibbles with her argument. Namely, I keep seeing data which somewhat contradicts the idea that we live in a golden age for straight women.<\/p>\n

Take, for example, the fact that women in opposite-sex marriages continue to do the bulk of the housework and caregiving. A 2023 repor<\/a>t from the Pew Research Center found that in so-called egalitarian marriages where husbands and wives earn about the same salaries, women are stilling spending more than double the amount of time their partners do on housework. They\u2019re also spending almost two hours more a week on caregiving. Husbands, meanwhile, spent three-and-a-half hours more on leisure activities. Dads are certainly helping out more than they used to, but much of the day-to-day domestic drudgery is still considered women\u2019s work.<\/p>\n

But perhaps AI is poised to solve that problem and usher in Taylor\u2019s golden age of heterosexuality. According to a new feature in Wired<\/a>, momfluencers are increasingly outsourcing their household tasks to chatbots and \u201cpitching AI as a better coparent than men\u201d. One of the leaders of this momfluencer movement is Swiss woman called Lilian Schmidt, who has a three-year-old daughter. Schmidt recently went viral<\/a> for saying she\u2019d outsourced 97% of her mental load to ChatGPT and has capitalized on her newfound fame by selling access to a custom GPT called Coparent.<\/p>\n

Schmidt, by the way, has a partner who she says \u201cdoes his fair share\u201d. Still, she\u2019s said that most of the household planning still falls to her. \u201cOur brains work differently. He\u2019s a doer and takes on the planning,\u201d Schmidt said in interview<\/a>. \u201cI do the thinking. That mental load falls on me.\u201d She expanded on that in her conversation with Wired. \u201cUnfortunately, mental load is still considered a female problem,\u201d Scmidt said. \u201cA lot of men don\u2019t even know what mental load even is.\u201d<\/p>\n

The good news for straight women with partners whose brains are too fragile to carry a mental load is that a whole host of enterprising momfluencers are now selling handbooks to help you co-parent with AI. It\u2019s not just Schmidt; there\u2019s a growing genre of YouTube videos and online courses AI-ifying parenting. As the Cut recently noted, we\u2019re also seeing \u201cthe girlbossification of AI<\/a>\u201d, as high-profile women such as Reese Witherspoon and Sheryl Sandberg encourage women to lean in to chatbots to make themselves more productive parents and workers. Truly, there has never been a better time in human history to happily and successfully pursue tech-enabled heterosexuality. Just ask ChatGPT.<\/p>\n

Anti-vax dating apps are hosting in-person meetups<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re still some of the most persecuted people in society right now,\u201d an event organizer for a \u201cSummer of Love\u201d mixer hosted by Unjected<\/a>, an anti-vax dating app, told WIRED<\/a>. \u201cIt just continues to encourage us to host these meetups.\u201d In other news, measles<\/a> has been making a huge comeback. Nothing says \u201cromance\u201d like unnecessarily succumbing to a once eliminated<\/a> disease.<\/p>\n

As the World Cup kicks off, Israel has continued<\/a> what the Palestinian Football Association described as \u201ca well-documented pattern of systematic targeting of Palestinian athletes, which continues without accountability\u201d.<\/p>\n

Niger military junta criminalizes same-sex relations<\/p>\n

According to the Washington Post<\/a>, the new penal code punishes anyone who \u201ccommits or attempts to commit an immodest or unnatural act or practices lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans-gender, Queer, intersex, Asexual (LGBTQIA+) acts\u201d with between five and 10 years in prison and a fine. (Fascinated to know how they are going to identify asexuals!) Laws criminalizing same-sex activity are common across Africa and can even carry the death penalty in places like Uganda.<\/p>\n

Why has Gwyneth Paltrow been nicknamed \u2018Gwynocide\u2019?<\/p>\n

I explain here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Nasa faces backlash for all-male Artemis III crew<\/p>\n

Out of Nasas 37 active astronauts eligible for flight assignments, 15 are women, NBC reports<\/a>. Alas, none of these women<\/a> made the cut for the four-person Artemis III crew which will head to lower Earth orbit next year as part of a project (named for a Greek goddess) to return humans to the moon and prepare for crewed missions to Mars. \u201cI don\u2019t think anyone should be reading into this,\u201d the Nasa administrator, Jared Isaacman, said<\/a> after backlash to the crew announcement. Next time, just call Katy Perry<\/a>, OK?<\/p>\n

A shadowy overseas group is trying to influence Australian abortion policy<\/p>\n

An anti-choice group called CitizenGo, founded in Spain and described<\/a> by a UN research institute as a global leader of anti-gender ideology, has been trying to make inroads in Australia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What the heck is a fraysexual?<\/p>\n

The Guardian gallantly tries to explain<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The week in pawtriarchy<\/p>\n

JD Vance has installed a custom-built chicken coop on the grounds of the vice-president\u2019s residence. Those lucky hens are getting better living conditions than some Americans are: the luxury coop is designed to look like the VP\u2019s own home and features a faux slate roof. An anonymous source told the Associated Press<\/a> that taxpayer money was not used to build the chicken hut, which is eggcellent news. Anyway, I hope Vance enjoys his omelets. And, rather more importantly, I hope that one day his chickens come home to roost.<\/p>\n