Judging Motherhood: AI, Surveillance, and Care in Jessamine Chan's The School for Good Mothers

This article examines Jessamine Chan's The School for Good Mothers (2022) through the interconnected themes of artificial intelligence, surveillance, motherhood, gender inequality, and care. Set in a near-future dystopian society, the novel portrays a state-controlled system in which artificial intelligence continuously monitors, evaluates, and corrects maternal behavior. Focusing on the protagonist, Frida, the study analyzes how algorithmic surveillance transforms motherhood from a lived emotional experience into a measurable, performative role. Drawing on Michel Foucault's concept of the Panopticon and Adrienne Rich's distinction between motherhood as experience and as institution, the article suggests that surveillance technologies may reinforce patriarchal expectations and regulate women's reproductive and emotional labor. The School for Good Mothers functions as a disciplinary institution in which robotic surrogate children collect data on mothers' behaviors, emotions, and caregiving practices. Furthermore, the novel highlights significant gender inequalities by subjecting mothers to rigorous scrutiny while largely absolving fathers of comparable responsibility. The analysis also elucidates the extent to which care may be commodified and transformed into a monitored performance governed by institutional standards. This study argues that Chan's novel should be read not only as a portrayal of motherhood under tech-mediated patriarchy but also as a warning about how racialized and classed assumptions about "bad mothers" are encoded into algorithmic systems of governance. Ultimately, the novel explores how artificial intelligence and surveillance reshape maternal identity, autonomy, and human relationships within a technologically mediated patriarchal society.