When Google replaced mothers

When I was a young mum, there was no Google.

No TikTok therapists.

No comment sections full of strangers diagnosing your parents.

There was a landline.

I lived in Ireland.

My parents lived in England.

And because calls were expensive, I rang home about once a fortnight — sometimes once every two weeks — and I made them count.

I’d ask my mother questions about raising children.

About behaviour.

About routines.

About things I was worried I was getting wrong.

Sometimes I asked about myself.

About my own childhood.

About family stories.

About things that suddenly mattered now that I was a mother.

And yes — I rolled my eyes.

A lot.

She’d often answer by telling me what she had done when we were small.

I’d think, Right… different times, or That wouldn’t work now, or God love her.

But never — not once — did I think:

“That answer is grounds for cutting her out of my life.”

It was a conversation.

Not a verdict.

Today, adult children don’t need to ring home

Not because they have everything figured out

but because they believe the internet already has the answers.

Why ring your mother to ask why she parented the way she did

when Google will tell you:

“Your parent was emotionally unavailable”

“This is trauma”

“That’s narcissistic behaviour”

“Cutting contact is a healthy boundary”

All neatly packaged.

No awkward conversations.

No complexity.

No context.

Just conclusions.

And what worries me most isn’t even Google itself

it’s who is doing the advising.

The rise of the TikTok psychologist

Social media is now full of loud, confident voices explaining family dynamics in 30 seconds or less.

Some are qualified.

Many are not.

Some are deeply angry.

Some are projecting their own unresolved pain.

Some aren’t even human at all.

Yes — bots.

Accounts created to stir emotion, gather data, or push content —

not to heal families.

Young adults don’t always realise this.

They assume everyone on their screen is real, informed, and acting in good faith.

So instead of ringing their mother —

they listen to strangers.

Instead of asking “What was happening for you then?”

they’re told “You don’t owe anyone an explanation.”

Instead of conversation

they’re given permission to disappear.

What gets lost when mothers are no longer needed

When mothers are removed from the equation, something subtle but important happens:

Nuance disappears

History gets flattened

Human frailty becomes “failure”

Context becomes “excuses”

And the mother — a whole woman with her own story, struggles, illness, grief, lack of support, and limitations — becomes a label.

Not a person.

A problem.

This isn’t about saying mothers were perfect.

We weren’t.

But we were human.

And human beings are not meant to be understood through search engines and soundbites alone.

A question worth asking

What if instead of asking Google

“Was my mother toxic?”

We encouraged adult children to ask their parents:

“What was life like for you then?”

What if curiosity came before cutting contact?

What if conversation still mattered?

Because once mothers become unnecessary —

once our voices are replaced by algorithms —

we don’t just lose relationships.

We lose intergenerational understanding. Because if it's like this now... what are the mothers of the next generation going to have to face? I worry for them all...

And that’s a cost no search engine can calculate.