Parenting 2.0

A handful of social networking sites like parentree.in and kidandparent.in have emerged in the past couple of years to cater to parents,especially those who are short on time and who’d rely on the internet for advice on raising kids,as long as it’s coming from other parents. On online parenting networks,members find hands-on information on child care and education through information exchange with other parents.

The founders of parentree.in and kidandparent.in too have similar back stories. They had lived in the US for a considerable period of time,where online parenting networks were a useful tool,and took the initiative to start one in India. Shobha Duriarajan,another software engineer who returned from San Francisco to Chennai five years ago,would “often unsuccessfully scramble” for information related to extracurricular activities for her two children by surfing the internet and asking her few acquaintances in the city. She started parentree.in,which,unlike bharatmoms.com,invites both moms and dads to register,and currently has 40,000 members,75 per cent of whom are women. The site has several groups,mostly classified according to the child’s age (“parents of babies”,“parents of 6 to 11 year-olds”) or location such as “Hyderabad parents”,“Ooty parents,“T Nagar,Chennai moms”.

Most of the information shared in the groups is related to schools ¯ on the merits and demerits of homework,ideas for an arts-and-crafts assignment,or the teaching standard in a particular school. “Parents in India are very education-focussed. In the US,where there is a public school system,parents on networking sites mostly seek activity-related information,” says Duriarajan,who began a school review section on the site,the “most popular feature that is monitored by schools too”. “They often call up to enquire about the reviews,and even offer ads,which we don’t accept,” she says.

But given that anyone can post or check up a review of a school or a doctor on various online forums,why a parenting website? S Prathaban,CEO of Coimbatore-based Oonjal Technologies,which runs kidandparent.in,a website with a thriving Facebook community of over 47,000 members,says,“There is way too much information on the internet,and much of it is unreliable. You can’t risk a baby’s health by relying on such information.” The website,launched in 2009,has a team of four content writers who read pregnancy and parenting books and write articles based on them. These are then verified by a team of four consultant experts,including a paediatrician,a child psychologist,a gynaecologist and a nutritionist.

The sites go beyond just information exchange. As Duriarajan suggests,“they offer emotional support in an era where families are nuclear,and increasingly mobile.” On the Facebook page of kidandparent.in,parents share their thoughts on varied topics ¯ whether spending more time with the father increases a child’s IQ,or “the heaviness of school bags”. There’s some fun to be had too. The website also runs a very popular best child photo of the month contest.

Groups on the sites are,thus,also formed according to interests such as cooking,or dancing,or professions. Members have also met up. Kiran Kusumba,mother to a 15-year-old and a four-year-old,joined parentree.in while looking for the review of a playschool. She is now part of 38 groups on the site,and has made over 260 online friends on the site. She organised a meet of the Hyderabad group,of which she is a part,last May. “Some 70 people had confirmed and 40 showed up. For those who could not make it,there was another meet in August. We simply talked and had fun,” says Kusumba,whose blog on the site invites suggestions on topics like what “green snack” she should include in her daughter’s tiffin,and how she could heal a wounded pigeon that arrived on her balcony. “When parents join such sites,they do so out of a need for information,but what makes them stay on is the need for friendship and support,” says Raman,who organised the first meet-up of bharatmoms.com in January 2009. Thereafter,members started organising their own meet-ups in their localities.

For home-makers,too,such sites are a boon. When Shabana Sajid,a self-confessed “internet novice not even on Facebook”, moved with her husband from Bijapur,a small town in north Karnataka,to Bangalore,she had no friends. Her husband suggested she join bharatmoms.com. Eight months on,Sajid is hooked. After packing off her child to school,she sits glued to her screen from 11 am to 4 pm,happily drawing from her experience to quell new mothers’ worries about topics like how to whet the appetite of a six-month-old,besides posting queries about which resort near Bangalore would be a good weekend getaway. The answers,she says,are“reliable as they come from a similar profile,rather than some unknown,random internet user”. Sometimes she also exchanges notes on domestic problems. “Things which we cannot share with family members,we can do so being anonymous on the internet,” she says.

Other users like Shipra Shukla have started working for such websites. Shukla joined kidandparent.in after using it for six months. The 43-year-old describes her recent task of “analysing over 200 comments on kidandparent.in’s Facebook page in response to the question,“What is your child’s favourite food?”. “After going through all the comments,I had to break down the information,and write an article on children’s favourite foods and why they like them.” The former writer with a medical transcription company says her current job gives her the “satisfaction of doing social service,by helping other parents in a world where parenting has become a complex task,with parents short on time,and children big on exposure”.