Death of the Maternal Instinct? How AI Is Teaching Moms Not to Trust Themselves

While national conversations around artificial intelligence predominantly center on tech guardrails for children, policy researcher and Bloomberg Opinion columnist Abby McCloskey argues that society is overlooking a quieter, equally profound shift: how AI is fundamentally rewiring modern motherhood.

In a recent commentary, McCloskey examined how algorithmic tools — used by an estimated 80% of parents — are eroding maternal confidence, heightening perfectionism, and replacing vital human-support networks.

‘Cognitive Offloading’ and the Erosion of Instinct

At the heart of the issue is a phenomenon known as “cognitive offloading” — the practice of turning to generative AI for everyday decision-making rather than relying on internal judgment or community advice.

Citing a study from Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, McCloskey pointed out that a third of parents now report trusting AI’s parenting advice over their own gut instincts.

“Over time, you could see how that would erode confidence in how you think is best to deal or treat your own child, which then creates more reliance on AI for parenting,” McCloskey explained.

Even when considering simple domestic logistics, such as whether siblings should share a bedroom, the friction-free nature of AI creates a slippery slope.

“There’s no precise answer or right or wrong about when and who shares a bedroom and why. But as long as there’s someone else to ask, kind of in the room at your fingertips, you don’t have to call or engage in anything else … over time, as it becomes easier and easier to ask these questions, get quick answers … you could see how it begins to erode maternal networks, peer-to-peer networks.”

Depersonalization and the Loss of Women’s Wisdom

Addressing this growing isolation, EWTN Radio host and senior fellow at The Catholic Association Ashley McGuire warned in statements to the Register that relying on algorithms bypasses both biological design and organic community:

“God built women for motherhood, and not only gave us natural instincts that serve our families well, but also an abundance of women — be they sisters, mothers, grandmothers — to impart wisdom and lessons learned to help us in moments of doubt,” McGuire emphasized. “So AI isn’t just robbing mothers of confidence in their maternal instincts, it’s depersonalizing motherhood and making it all the more isolating.”

The Cultural Vacuum: Feminism, AI, and Spiritual Maturity

This trend toward technological reliance doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Catholic author and philosopher Carrie Gress noted that decades of cultural devaluation of the maternal role has left many women feeling ill-equipped for the demands of raising a family in an increasingly complex world.

“One of the results of feminism’s devaluation of motherhood is that women haven’t been well trained in the art of mothering,” Gress observed. “It’s understandable that AI is attractive as a help or stopgap, particularly in our overly complex world. Most of us don’t have a mom, aunt or wiser woman to tap into when things become challenging. It is easy to panic.”

However, Gress cautions that outsourcing maternal judgment to digital tools risks stalling a woman’s personal, emotional and spiritual growth:

“Motherhood is more of an art. It offers women the capacity to truly grow in wisdom, becoming like Mary and ‘pondering these things in our heart,’ instead of living with a constant dependency on technology. When we let others do the mothering, without discernment or developing our own maternal instincts, it is easy to stay stuck in an adolescent mode instead of growing into full emotional and spiritual maturity.”

The Lie of Optimization

McCloskey echoed a similar concern on EWTN Radio regarding the psychological pressure on mothers today. When she prompted Google’s Gemini on how AI might dismantle American motherhood, the system outlined a pattern of hyper-individualized isolation, heightened perfectionism, and an environment where every routine choice feels like a high-stakes fork in the road.

Rather than offering relief to mothers — who are already navigating a culture where 41% report being too stressed to function — AI often turns up the volume on an already intense “arms race” of perfectionism.

“I think it’s fundamentally a lie that parenting has to be optimized, that if you control every single thing you can within your home, that you’re going to set your child off on the right track,” McCloskey said. “And I think that’s exhausting.”

The Illusion of Sourcing and Hallucinations

Beyond the psychological and spiritual toll, relying on AI for family guidance carries immediate practical risks. Unlike consulting a trusted doctor, grandmother or neighbor, algorithms operate as black boxes that frequently “hallucinate” incorrect information or deliver advice detached from a family’s moral values.

“AI still hallucinates. And I know from using it for work, that there are just very clear things, like how many senators in the U.S. Senate are Republicans, and it will just give the wrong answer,” McCloskey warned on EWTN Radio. “When it’s giving facts wrong that you know are not right, that’s one thing. But all of a sudden, if you’re using it to help medicate your child, make vaccine decisions, make school decisions … where it’s randomly hallucinating or just saying something without any sort of backing behind it, I think it becomes incredibly concerning.”

Highlighting insights from Dr. Dana Suskind’s research, McCloskey emphasized that while generative AI is brand new and unproven, “maternal instinct has been honed over millennia and remains a core part of childrearing.”

Restoring Trust in Human Connection

As society grapples with institutional skepticism and digital overload, these thinkers caution mothers against seeking refuge in non-human algorithms.

“The surprising thing to me in all of this is that what comes out on the other side of what to trust and who to believe is indeed perhaps the least accountable, most black box of all, which is AI,” McCloskey observed. “And I tend to be in the camp that the way to restore said trust, especially in oneself, is not going to be increasingly cognitively offloading to a machine. That seems like it’s going to make it worse over time and not better.”