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Times
Of India, 16 April 2001
Welcome to NET PARENTING
Parenting now is not all about bearing the tension single-handedly, trying at times to hide the child's shortcomings from the relatives and neighbours. The candid parent of today prefers to talk about child problems in public and share their experience of bringing up children. Welcome to indiaparenting.com a portal that caters to the needs of parents who want to meet up and talk of the one important issue that concerns parenting - bringing up children. Started by Mumbai based Nirali Sanghi in 1999 after she came back to India from USA where she was posted as the Assistant Vice President of Citibank, this site today has content of over 5000 pages. According to the core team of the portal, the site is a specialized effort to give a common meeting ground for parents who want to know anything about bringing up a child. While on the one hand there are sections of fun, games, and details on the Indian culture and its history, the site has not shied away from discussing the more mundane and practical problems like sex and drugs that plague most teenagers in their pursuit of fast track adulthood. "We have a panel of consulting doctors, child pschycologists, educationists who help children come out of their problems and also address parents with suggestions to handle a problem child, " said a spokesperson for the dotcom. With a regular hit of over a lakh per day, the site has a regular clientele among the non-resident Indians. The reason for this is the fact that most Indians who love abroad suffer from a tussle between wanting to bring up their children in a certain way amidst what can best be described as an alien atmosphere. The parents look for a place where they can get suggestions from people of their community and country. "In a way, this is the world's single largest community of Indian families," says the spokesperson. And this we assure you is not at all. For the expecting mother, there is a discussion board that allows women expecting on the same day to come together and discuss their health conditions and problems. Not to forget that mom's can indulge in sending a gift to their little ones through the dotcom. So when the mother's to be and the old mothers have a section to themselves, the kids who have just seen the computer need to have a space where they can experiment with this new experience. Welcome now to the kid-centric zone, meant only for kids from the age-group of 1 to 8 years. This channel currently has zones on stories, rhymes, party-time, and even e-cards. Talk to e-savvy kids and you have them here too. So while the kids and the parents learn to handle each other virtually, shall we wait for the day when we will have virtual parents and virtual kids? When the little guy walks into school and tells his classmate, "They are supplying better mom'n on portal X".
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