This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Cara Katz. It has been edited for length and clarity.
A little over a year ago, AI became more prevalent in my mom communities than it had been in years prior.
I had been familiar with and using AI for about six years at work, where there was a lot of skepticism about its use — and back then, it wasn’t something we used at home. Fast-forward to about 18 months ago, and parents started using it to increase efficiency, saving time and maximizing output in their personal lives.
At first, it was mainly parents in tech and marketing, but now it’s being used by parents with no tech experience. We didn’t feel any shame about it at first, but things have changed thanks to the explosion of public opinion about using AI.
Since I’ve started using it at home, I’ve saved myself at least 10 hours a week. I’m tired of being judged for it.
I use it to plan our week
Scheduling is my favorite way to use AI at home because it saves me the most time, though it can be slightly complicated.
I used to spend most Sundays planning our week as a family of three. I work from home, and my husband works from home two days a week. My daughter goes to transition school, which is two hours of school two days a week. We don’t have any organized childcare, but she does have enrichment activities like music and gym.
Courtesy of Cara Katz
My husband and I take turns caring for our daughter, but if both of us are busy, I plan for a babysitter to have her in the house or to take her out.
It makes for a really busy schedule to arrange and remember.
I started using Claude Code, which sounds scary, but it’s just a chatbot for code writing. It can be used exactly the same way as Claude.
It walked me through how to organize our Google calendars — our daughter’s calendar and our separate work calendars. Claude reads them all, and I prompted Claude to create this beautiful, color-coded HTML calendar.
I also fed it my daughter’s periphery schedules — like library events for the month — and trained it on her preferences. Every week, it sources events that she would be interested in, and puts them into the calendar.
It sends our babysitters’ recommended times, based on their previous work-time preferences, and asks them to agree to the date and time provided to have our daughter.
We then publish the schedule on Netlify, press “deploy,” and it creates a password-protected website that caregivers can view. If there is any chance, I enter that change, and it automatically updates and emails everyone a link leading us back to the website.
These days, I spend five minutes here and there on scheduling.
It also plans my shopping list
AI does all of my grocery planning. It runs a full inventory of my pantry to know what we already have, knows all of our preferences, knows my daughter and husband are celiac, and even knows my husband’s blood results. It uses all of this information to design a shopping list and meal plan.
I connect Claude to DoorDash and Uber Eats to get our groceries delivered. You can set it up so that this happens automatically, but I like to have a look at the list before I pay.
I followed my daughter’s developmental milestones with AI
I think moms get freaked out by developmental milestones — we know milestones exist, but aren’t taught that there is a range within these milestones.
When my daughter was a baby, I built a Claude project that researched which milestones she should be hitting. I asked for an updated list of activities we could do each week to help her achieve her developmental milestones. We printed it out and ticked off the activities.
When we went to the pediatrician for a check-up, we knew where she was developmentally before we even walked through the door. We could then have empowered conversations with the doctor.
I get more time with my kid
I love going back to my mom communities after being pelted with strong opinions from people who say that hate AI. We are buying back time with our kids using AI. My mental workload has lightened.
It’s hard for me to take people who are angry about AI seriously. It is easy to be theoretically morally angry.
It is quite different to sit across from a single mom, stay-at-home mom, or a working mom who struggles to pay bills, or spend time with their family, and tell her not to use AI because it probably uses less water than big organizations do.
