{"id":147891,"date":"2025-09-11T01:59:15","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T01:59:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/147891\/"},"modified":"2025-09-11T01:59:15","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T01:59:15","slug":"parentconnect-the-in-real-life-antidote-to-the-internet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/147891\/","title":{"rendered":"ParentConnect: The in-real-life antidote to the internet"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"A winter 2025 new moms group. Credit: ParentConnect<\/p>\n

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\u2019ve never heard of prior to having kids, or source a used robotic bassinet from someone in your neighborhood for half the price. \u201cSmart\u201d devices like the Owlet sock promise to soothe maternal anxiety by allowing you to track your baby\u2019s 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 \u201cpurchase\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s 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<\/a>, in the wake of the pandemic, to bring new parents together\u2013in 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 \u201cwere 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"\"ParentConnect founders Meera Sinha (left) and Emma Huntley believe that often what new parents need most is to vent to a friend.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cSo many moms in our groups have said social media has been a toxic influence on [their parenting experience] but that they literally can\u2019t tear themselves away from it. They feel it\u2019s having a really negative impact on their lives. People are looking for an alternative,\u201d said Sinha.<\/p>\n

I asked Huntley and Sinha where they see new parents turning for advice these days. \u201cI see a lot of moms looking to experts, like Emily Oster, Dr. Becky, or Big Little Feelings, for advice\u2013experts who offer courses they can take,\u201d said Huntley. My own Instagram feed is full of soundbites from such experts. \u201cI think that can be double-edged. It can be helpful to have information, but several of the moms we\u2019ve 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\u2019t work. It can make you feel like a bad parent,\u201d said Sinha.<\/p>\n

I can relate. I recently absorbed one reel, which told me to never use the word \u201cno\u201d with my toddler, a proscription that seems impossible. But is saying \u201cgentle hands\u201d really going to teach my child to stop using physical violence to express her frustration with me more effectively than saying \u201cno hitting\u201d?<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re trying to create with ParentConnect is something that naturally helps parents realize that there\u2019s just \u2026 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,\u201d said Sinha. \u201cSo 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\u2019ll get through it\u2026Maybe getting coffee with a friend and talking it out is what parents really need,\u201d said Sinha.<\/p>\n

\"\"New mom breakout groups. Photo: ParentConnect.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cthe one thing we would never do would be a digital project, we\u2019re now working on developing an app,\u201d said Sinha, laughing. \u201cBut the moms have been asking for this.\u201d There is an appetite for a place to ask questions and seek advice from a trusted community\u2013instead of the entire Internet\u2013after a class ends. They hope the forthcoming app will capture the feeling and culture of their ParentConnect groups and be an \u201copen, nonjudgmental, very Evanston space,\u201d said Huntley.<\/p>\n

ParentConnect\u2019s next focus is trying to figure out how to create a kind of social club for parents. \u201cWill people actually pay for this kind of center? Would they use on-site childcare if we offered it?\u201d 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\u2019re partnering with Evanston\u2019s coming-soon farm-to-table restaurant, Burl, for a parent-centered happy hour<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"A group of summer babies and their caretakers. Photo: ParentConnect <\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a growing awareness about how important it is to have a village as a parent,\u201d said Sinha, \u201ceven moreso than when I was pregnant seven years ago.\u201d But Sinha and Huntley are cognizant of the challenges of trying to offer a privatized solution in a country that doesn\u2019t 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\u2014a new mom\u2019s group, a community center, a health visitor. If only there were a world where relatively inexpensive interventions like new mothers\u2019 groups\u2013which have been shown to improve postpartum social and emotional health\u2013were covered by insurance.<\/p>\n

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, \u201cWhen we spoke to the chef and co-owner of Burl [Thomas Carlin], he said we want to create a space that\u2019s not your house, but where you can go to get away from your kids or with your kids as a community space\u2013a space that feels elevated but also welcoming. We need more spaces like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tRelated Stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A winter 2025 new moms group. Credit: ParentConnect For a new parent, the Internet can offer connection and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":147892,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[174,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-147891","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-internet","8":"tag-internet","9":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}