As many readers know, parenting is not a “one size fits all” experience, and no existing blueprint perfectly resembles the path toward becoming the perfect parent. However, much like society, there are evolving techniques and practices that aim to personalize your parenting experience based on your journey and, with the help of AI, one app in particular recognizes the importance of moving beyond guidelines with a main purpose of “rekindling trust in your parenting instincts”.
The recently launched Era App, generated by the creative team at the Parent Lab, is both personalized by AI and rooted in attachment theory, a concept that suggests how the emotional attachment given to us by our primary caregivers at a young age will influence later interpersonal relationships. Of course, there is so much more to this theory and the Era App. Just what does it do? What does it derive from? Is it necessary for today’s parents? To learn more, we sat down with Vancouver resident and CEO of the Parent Lab, creators of the Era App, Josh Iwata.
“I’ve been in product design and tech startups for about twenty years,” says Iwata. “Through that period the longest job, the most challenging job, and the most important job I have had is being a dad. Most parents are familiar with this. I have had tons of training in my career but no training as a parent.”
While most can empathize with Iwata’s sentiment, one would be forgiven to think that there’s an abundance of resources out there to make life easier. However, what we learned next was interesting.
“There was a recent survey done that shows that 70% of parents think that parenting is harder today than it was twenty years ago,” says Iwata. “There’s never been a point in history where we have had this much advice and this many resources, such as tricks, trips, books, videos. One recent study showed that the more parents engage with all this parenting content online the lower their self-confidence rating goes. It’s shocking.”
It’s an overwhelming thought, the idea that there’s simply too much information out there with nobody to organize it, especially when a parent is unable to find the source or even if it’s an applicable strategy to their own child’s needs. So, understanding this, Iwata began to cultivate through a wide array of information gathering a way to help parents harvest the ideas of attachment theory, or more specifically the idea of secure attachment.
“There are two things I knew that needed to be accomplished with the Era app,” says Iwata. “The first is that the app needs to be personalized and it needs to be guided. We realized about a year ago how AI was strong with the guiding aspect. We’re finding it does a really good job of helping you to reflect back and discover insights about yourself. Era will learn about you and your family the more you use it.”
An example of this is how Era will be able to provide check-ins based on problems or issues that came up the previous day, asking you how it went and if the conflict has been resolved. However, Era represents so much more than that. Just what is the app’s main function and how does it work?
“The day one experience with Era starts with a simple onboarding process so Era can learn about your interests,” says Iwata. “Then it will want to learn about your family by learning your kids’ birthdays and names. Then we’ll have you go through a check-in process which will be your first interaction with Era’s AI, where we’ll ask you a series of questions regarding each child. At the end of this process, we’ll be able to generate an insight into your family, making it easier to provide future advice. It’s hyper-personalized. From there your journey with the app will begin.”
That journey with Era represents a lot of things, including understanding things about you and your family such as temperament and relationships. However, as time goes by the information Era collects of your family grows exponentially, using fun things from applicable podcasts to sports metaphors to help in advice-giving.
Now, one important thing we wanted to note is that the Era experience is not exclusive to strictly parents, but caregivers in general, from Grandparents to other guardians, even single mothers.
“One of the biggest groups we have in our audience is single mothers,” says Iwata. “They tell us that Era has been a strong gap-filler for that missing partner. Attachment-based parenting is all about connection, and kids can form secure attachments to other adults in their lives who are primary caregivers besides parents. This can represent a grandparent or even a teacher that a child feels close with.”
Currently, Era is roughly $80 annually, with a monthly option of $12 a month. The app also offers a seven-day free trial for all parents and guardians who wish to have access to the app’s experience as well as its entire library, including podcasts, quizzes, courses, guides, and so much more. Learn more about Era at https://getera.app.
