Tech Tools for the Modern Family

How both B2B and B2C tech innovations are empowering today’s parents and childcare providers

Today’s parenting landscape has evolved at a rapid pace. Compared to just a few decades ago, the makeup of the workforce is changing rapidly; the work participation rate for women with children under age 6 has grown significantly in the past 40 years, as has the percentage of families with children in which both parents work. Further, today’s parents, educators, employers, and children are living in a world that is increasingly tech-first.

Parents — especially modern millennial parents — expect tech-forward, simple, and elegant solutions across all spheres of their lives, but particularly as they seek to raise the next generation.

Though the parenting landscape and their accompanying expectations have changed over the past several decades, workplace and early education solutions have not kept pace, as evidenced by the significant number of childcare “deserts” across rural, urban, and suburban areas of the US. This imbalance offers up a large market opportunity both on the business-to-business and business-to-consumer side for software and solutions catered more towards today’s modern, mobile-friendly, tech-expert, and often dual-income, families.

B2B Considerations for Tech-Enabled Childcare

• Childcare is an extremely emotional decision for a parent that requires a high amount of trust.
• Demand for high-quality, tech-forward, flexible, and affordable early education centers is high.
• Center operators need to prioritize caring for and educating the children at their schools.
• Early education providers today will succeed if they are able to provide this trust as well as the flexibility and transparency that today’s parents require.

There’s an opportunity to use technology to help streamline childcare center operations and coordinate parent communications:

• Technology can help ease the administrative burden on providers and allow them to focus their energy on care and education, therefore taking advantage of the growing market environment.
• Providers like Sawyer, Tadpoles, SmartCare, or WeeCare allow them to outsource non-core tasks like payroll, tuition and onboarding, staff training, online registration, or parent communications to better serve their customers.

B2C Considerations for Tech-Enabled Childcare

• Today’s parents expect technology to be seamlessly integrated into a growing proportion of their daily interactions.
• These parents are the same savvy, educated, mobile-friendly consumers they were before they had children; now they also value convenience, ease, and working with smart companies that have the potential to make their lives easier.

Parents today need future-forward support in raising the next generation, as offered by some of the providers outlined below:

• Rockets of Awesome (reinventing the way parents shop for kids)
• Kidpass (platform for parents to discover and book kid’s activities)
• Urbansitter (helps parents find babysitters through people they trust)
• Peanut (networking app that connects like-minded mothers)

Across both the B2B and B2C landscapes there is a huge opportunity for technology to help improve the experience of parents today, especially dual income and working families.

If you’re a tech provider helping to improve the experience for childcare providers and parents navigating raising and educating children in today’s world, please reach out (particularly if you’re a growth-stage company that may be raising $10-$25M of capital in the near term!).

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