A winter 2025 new moms group. Credit: ParentConnect

For a new parent, the Internet can offer connection and convenience. You might find a message board where you can interact with the parents of other children diagnosed with something you’ve never heard of prior to having kids, or source a used robotic bassinet from someone in your neighborhood for half the price. “Smart” devices like the Owlet sock promise to soothe maternal anxiety by allowing you to track your baby’s oxygen levels from your phone. But inextricably entangled with these technologies is a rapidly social media proliferating momfluencer culture that not only fuels consumption (who among us has not clicked “purchase” on an Instagram ad while feeding a baby in the middle of the night?), but that often tends to exacerbate postpartum anxiety by offering a seemingly endless wheel of non-vetted, non-expert advice.

It’s hard not to turn to the device in your hand for advice, entertainment, or communication when you are home alone (or awake at night) with a small baby. Unless, of course, you have somewhere else to turn. That is in part why childhood best friends Emma Huntley and Meera Sinha founded ParentConnect almost two years ago, in the wake of the pandemic, to bring new parents together–in person. With their years of professional experience working with families and young children, Huntley and Sinha were frequently approached by friends needing advice on kid stuff. But these parents “were also feeling lost and disconnected, and with the pandemic, especially socially isolated. We were reading so much about the loneliness epidemic and the long-term impacts of social isolation and the fact that parents are a high-risk population.”

Since launching ParentConnect in January 2024, Huntley and Sinha have offered groups for new and pregnant moms, family events, educational events for parents, and prenatal wellness events. To find out what parents in the area actually want and need, they decided to try out this variety of programming to see what resonated. Over a year and a half later, the co-founders have found that connecting new parents with other new parents in the same community offers something that feels like a vital and powerful alternative to the bad and potentially misleading information increasingly being fed to parents by the algorithm.

ParentConnect founders Meera Sinha (left) and Emma Huntley believe that often what new parents need most is to vent to a friend.

 “So many moms in our groups have said social media has been a toxic influence on [their parenting experience] but that they literally can’t tear themselves away from it. They feel it’s having a really negative impact on their lives. People are looking for an alternative,” said Sinha.

I asked Huntley and Sinha where they see new parents turning for advice these days. “I see a lot of moms looking to experts, like Emily Oster, Dr. Becky, or Big Little Feelings, for advice–experts who offer courses they can take,” said Huntley. My own Instagram feed is full of soundbites from such experts. “I think that can be double-edged. It can be helpful to have information, but several of the moms we’ve talked with have expressed that it can feel really hard to take a class, try to implement it with your kid, and then feel like it doesn’t work. It can make you feel like a bad parent,” said Sinha.

I can relate. I recently absorbed one reel, which told me to never use the word “no” with my toddler, a proscription that seems impossible. But is saying “gentle hands” really going to teach my child to stop using physical violence to express her frustration with me more effectively than saying “no hitting”?

“What we’re trying to create with ParentConnect is something that naturally helps parents realize that there’s just … no solution to a lot of problems. Though you might be searching for solutions, often the most helpful thing is just to vent to a friend,” said Sinha. “So many of the things parents go through when they feel like their kid is having a hard time might just be a phase and they’ll get through it…Maybe getting coffee with a friend and talking it out is what parents really need,” said Sinha.

New mom breakout groups. Photo: ParentConnect.

To that end, Sinha and Huntley are pressing pause on new mom groups after this fall to develop two very different kinds of spaces for which local parents have been clamoring. First, despite saying “the one thing we would never do would be a digital project, we’re now working on developing an app,” said Sinha, laughing. “But the moms have been asking for this.” There is an appetite for a place to ask questions and seek advice from a trusted community–instead of the entire Internet–after a class ends. They hope the forthcoming app will capture the feeling and culture of their ParentConnect groups and be an “open, nonjudgmental, very Evanston space,” said Huntley.

ParentConnect’s next focus is trying to figure out how to create a kind of social club for parents. “Will people actually pay for this kind of center? Would they use on-site childcare if we offered it?” Huntley and Sinha say that their biggest challenge for now is finding a space for events and figuring out what a more regular space would look like. This October, they’re partnering with Evanston’s coming-soon farm-to-table restaurant, Burl, for a parent-centered happy hour.

A group of summer babies and their caretakers. Photo: ParentConnect

“There’s a growing awareness about how important it is to have a village as a parent,” said Sinha, “even moreso than when I was pregnant seven years ago.” But Sinha and Huntley are cognizant of the challenges of trying to offer a privatized solution in a country that doesn’t offer new parents any kind of social safety net. Much of what ParentConnect aims to offer is integrated into standard government-subsidized postpartum healthcare in other countries—a new mom’s group, a community center, a health visitor. If only there were a world where relatively inexpensive interventions like new mothers’ groups–which have been shown to improve postpartum social and emotional health–were covered by insurance.

We talked about our desire to see more spaces in Evanston where parents feel welcome to bring their kids, but can hang out with other adults. Sinha continued, “When we spoke to the chef and co-owner of Burl [Thomas Carlin], he said we want to create a space that’s not your house, but where you can go to get away from your kids or with your kids as a community space–a space that feels elevated but also welcoming. We need more spaces like that.”

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