Awakening with AI: an autoethnographic exploration of emotional labour and identity formation in a young academic mother
TL;DR
An autoethnographic account of AI as a reflective companion rather than a therapeutic or authoritative agent is offered, highlighting how women, particularly those balancing motherhood and academic identities, may use AI-mediated dialogue to surface emotional labour and renegotiate their sense of self.
Abstract
This article examines how conversational artificial intelligence (AI) can function as a catalyst for identity awareness and reflexive sensemaking among women navigating emotionally demanding life roles. Using analytic autoethnography, the study draws on sustained AI-mediated dialogues alongside reflexive writing to examine how meaning-making unfolded during a period of personal and professional tension. The analysis is informed by emotional labour theory, transformative learning and feminist standpoint perspectives. The findings illustrate how AI-mediated dialogue supported the articulation of previously silenced emotions and facilitated recognition of internalised obedience, inherited scripts of “good daughterhood” and gendered expectations shaping everyday life. Rather than producing solutions, AI functioned as a narrative scaffold that enabled reflexive distancing and identity re-seeing. This article contributes to qualitative scholarship by offering an autoethnographic account of AI as a reflective companion rather than a therapeutic or authoritative agent. It highlights how women, particularly those balancing motherhood and academic identities, may use AI-mediated dialogue to surface emotional labour and renegotiate their sense of self.