The mom network: It takes a village — or an app
Tech helps parents find advice and make one mother of a connection
When TuWana Morrissette’s twins were approaching their first birthday, she couldn’t shake the feeling that the parenting advice she was getting from her dad, though well-meaning, was a bit out of date. Morrissette, 26, wanted real-world, real-time advice from moms with kids the same age as hers.
Stumped on how to meet mothers in Katy, where she lives, Morrissette typed the word “mom” into the App Store and discovered Peanut (peanut-app.io).
She downloaded the free app that uses location targeting and swipe technology similar to a dating app to connect moms and moms-to be. “I was hooked to it ever since,” Morrissette said.
Morrissette said she quickly connected with several moms of young children. They began to correspond using the app’s chat function or by commenting on one another’s posts, which show up in a newsfeed similar to Facebook’s.
Soon some of them met
up for a playdate, which led to hosting dinners in one another’s homes. This month, a year after those initial virtual greetings, the group attended the second birthday party for Morrissette’s daughter, Jariyah Morrissette, and son, Jessiah Morrissette.
“We talk every single day,” Morrissette said of her mom tribe. “They’re like my little accountability group. We help each other in the hard times and congratulate each other in the good times as well.”
With the widespread acceptance of dating apps, matching technology is now spilling into the platonic space. The dating app Bumble, for example, now offers Bumble BFF — where women are matched with like-minded women looking for “authentic friendships” — and Bumble Bizz, which connects women for professional networking purposes.
Similar location-based algorithms are matching moms who use apps such as Peanut, which hosted a launch event in Houston this summer. Social Mama (socialmama.us), which recently invested in improving its technology, takes the matches a step further by organizing Houson meet-ups.
Both promise to connect mothers with other mothers, who come to the apps looking for parenting advice, a sounding board, playdates or as a way to feel that they’re not the only mom who’s feeling overwhelmed.
Morrissette remains an active user on Peanut, where she dispenses advice to other moms about having preemies — her twins were born at just 25 weeks and spent two months in the neonatal intensive care unit at Memorial Hermann Katy Hospital.
She posts pictures of her thriving toddlers “on their journey,” she said, noting when they reach milestones and splicing current-day photos with images of their tiny bodies in the NICU.
When women post questions or concerns on Peanut about postpartum depression, which Morrissette experienced for several months after childbirth, she responds with supportive comments or private direct messages.
“You have to talk to someone to let them know what’s going on,” she said about women battling postpartum depression. “And don’t think something is wrong with you and that you’re the only one dealing with it.”
“Your kids don’t need a perfect mom, they need a happy mom,” is Morrissette’s mantra.
Not surprisingly, Morrissette has accumulated a large network of moms on Peanut, which she describes as “a nonjudgmental zone.” She frequently organizes meetups, including one gettogether at a movie night at Levy Park and another this month at George Bush Park. Along with the app, real-life get-togethers are a chance for moms to discuss “topics they think most people don’t want to hear,” she said. “People just need support.”
A new technology is born
Michelle Kennedy, who launched Peanut in 2017, has a professional background at dating apps Bumble and Badoo.
The experience inspired her to create an app-based matchmaking service for moms after she became one herself, a transition she described as a “seismic life change.”
“Nothing changed to me in terms of who I thought I was as a person,” Kennedy said, but everything in her day-to-day life changed. “From working and going a million miles an hour to being on my own.”
None of her girlfriends were having children at the same time, and she felt lonely.
“A lot of my identity and who I identified with was tied very much with who I was in my professional life,” said Kennedy, 36. With no one to ask parenting questions, she turned to the internet and found the answers “bizarre” and outdated.
So she began developing Peanut, which now has approximately 1 million users with about
3,000 living in Houston.
Peanut has had users in Houston since its inception, but the launch event indicated a certain saturation point, Kennedy said.
When users create their Peanut profile, they upload a photo and basic criteria including location and ages of their children or their stage in pregnancy.
They also choose interests and identifiers from a list that includes “Military Mama,” single mom, LGBTQ or mom to a child with special needs.
Other options include working professional mom or one with an affinity for wine, reading, music or DIYing.
Kennedy said this is how the app connects moms who are not just close geographically but may have something in common when they get matched. When a mom sees another mom’s profile she likes, she swipes up to “wave” to her. If the other mom waves back, it’s a match.
As the user spends more time on Peanut, Kennedy said the app uses machine learning and intelligent algorithms for additional connections.
The algorithms track what women are reading on the app, the languages they speak, their neighborhood and their professional industry, for example.
Commonalities like these are key to lasting friendships, Kennedy said, something she struggled to find as a new mom.
“Making friends as an adult absolutely sucks,” she said, adding that adults don’t like being vulnerable.
“Motherhood is the leveler, the thing that kind of starts the conversation,” she said, not unlike how moms might meet in a breastfeeding circle or during soccer practice.
Peanut extends that initial conversation beyond diapers and discipline. “We share the same values and thoughts and, by the way, we’re both moms,” Kennedy said.
Users might connect over a shared love of books. Two moms who met on Peanut eventually founded a business together, she said. In Houston, the top interests among users are food, wine, outdoor enthusiasts and “home birds,” a designation that indicates a mom prefers a cozy night in with family over a busy social calendar.
“The oldest form of social media is sort of motherhood,” said Kennedy, referring to how moms have long shared tips, advice and product endorsements.
Matching, IRL
Amanda Ducach is the Houston-based founder of Social Mama (socialmama.us), which has about 5,000 local users.
Social Mama initially offered a swiping function similar to Peanut’s to match moms, but the app was re-released this summer with entirely new technology.
Ducach, 33, found that swiping to match with other moms was intimidating to users. “It sounds great in theory but doesn’t work in practice,” she said.
Moms were uncomfortable deciding whether to connect with others based on a photo or brief bio, she said. That kind of “chemical connection ... is better for dating,” she said. “You feel more isolated and lonely than when you came,” she said of Social Mama’s old technology.
She’s betting on the new algorithm she’s built with her husband, Vish Sharma, a technologist. They are parents to Leo, 2.
To create an account on Social Mama, women complete a profile that has the ability to collect about 200 data points. These include identifying oneself as a mom to an autistic child, a mom experiencing divorce, a mom to a child with food allergies. A user can indicate she’s budgetsavvy or is looking for a workout buddy or for “kidless dates.”
Ducach initially founded Social Mama, in part, as a way to connect mothers experiencing the same pediatric health diagnosis. More generally, moms need support around childbirth, breastfeeding, colic and choices of preschools, she said.
“It just never stops,” Ducach said. “Every time you go through one of these life changes, the natural response is to want to reach out to other people when you’re feeling lonely or isolated or confused.”
As moms began to connect on Social Mama during the app’s initial phase, they wanted to meet up in person and bring their kids. Ducach said they turned to the app to ask about the availability of app-sanctioned events, which would make them more comfortable to meet.
Ducach began organizing the type of events that are now a tenet of her business model, including a recent doughnut-making class for moms and kids at Duck Donuts, a stroller walk at Memorial Park and an adult workday at a coworking space.
One of the moms who heard about the events is Carrie Colbert, a local blogger who frequently shares pictures of her 2-year-old daughter Elle to her 95,000 followers on Instagram. She is now an investor in Social Mama.
Colbert, who invests only in female-owned businesses, said she was impressed with the app’s robust matching technology.
In the current digital age, “we’re connected online in many ways, but yet we feel very isolated in many ways,” said Colbert, 42. “A lot of the connections are superficial at best.”
Social Mama’s multiple profile identifiers allow for a “deeper connection,” which Colbert says moms are “longing for.”
“I didn’t become a mom until age 40, and I have to say I was fairly oblivious of the needs and demands and wants of moms before becoming one myself,” she said. “There are times you want to find someone to connect to who’s at the same stage as you.”
Joy Green, a Peanut user who hosted the recent Houston launch party, shared a similar experience.
“I just think motherhood is not meant to be done alone,” said Green,
31, who downloaded Peanut when she moved to Sugar Land with her husband and wanted to meet other moms nearby. The couple is now expecting their second child.
“Not every woman has that perfect, ‘Sex and the City’-like support system,” Green said.
Modern-day moms use technology for ease, she said, so it’s natural that they’d use it to meet other moms. “You’re just wanting that validation, wanting that connection. It’s just simple and easy to connect online and then have that option to take that connection to the next level and meet face to face. I think that just makes it more meaningful.”