THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, April 30, 1996 TAG: 9604300029
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: THE GATEWAY
EXPLORING THE COMPUTER WORLD
SOURCE: BY MATTHEW BOWERS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 116 lines
YOUR TODDLER refuses to eat anything except butterscotch pudding.
Your messy son wants a raise in his allowance, even though his bedroom floor hasn't seen light in years.
Your teenage daughter doesn't talk with you about the weather, much less about the boy whose name's tattooed on her hip . . . right under the words ``PROPERTY OF.''
Time was, such situations would send anxious parents screaming straight to the grandparents, to the bookshelf for Dr. Spock or to the backyard fence to compare notes with the neighbors.
This, however, is 1996. The grandparents are in another city, we hardly know our neighbors and Dr. Spock's book isn't updated daily to keep up with possessive tattoos.
So, many of today's parents are firing up their computers and jumping onto the Internet for to-the-minute help in bringing up baby.
Parents find basic information, expert advice and - for many this is the big thing - peer support on the ubiquitous international computer network. This is particularly attractive to those isolated by distance or circumstances from family or other parents.
``The thing that is nice is you can find people who share your very specific interests,'' said Elisabeth D. Shiffer. She's a 39-year-old stay-at-home mother of three in rural upstate New York who often peruses ParentSoup, a World Wide Web site that opened in January.
Before her family rises each morning, Shiffer puts on the coffee and checks her electronic mail. She logs on a couple of more times during the day looking for information, asking questions of online experts and chatting by e-mail with friends around the country that she's made through Internet discussion groups.
Shiffer even has used the Internet to get a second medical opinion. Her pediatrician once prescribed a complicated surgery when one of Shiffer's daughters suffered from blocked tear ducts. Shiffer wasn't comfortable with that, went online, found more information and opinions about alternative treatments and presented them to her doctor. The surgery was avoided.
The bottom line is: Don't mess with Mama Shiffer's computer.
``I would die,'' she said. ``I think I would feel isolated. Because we do live in a very rural place.''
There long have been online discussion groups for parents. All of the major commercial online services, such as giant America Online and the new Microsoft Network, have parenting forums.
And now several full-service parenting sites have popped up on the World Wide Web - ParentSoup, Family Planet and others - offering magazine-like articles, question-answering experts, calendars of events, book and video reviews and links to other parenting computer sites or organizations. ParentSoup alone has a listing of 500 groups concerning parenting issues from breast-feeding to finding a sports team for your child.
But it's the interactive component - the online discussion groups - that attracts many users who are, as one wrote to ParentSoup, ``dying for someone besides a 2-month-old or a telemarketer to talk to.'' An antidote to loneliness seems a big draw. After two months, ParentSoup had more than 70,000 people listed in its personals looking for online relationships - or more.
It's certainly not all about potty-training, and the parenting-site users don't all think alike, as evident in a recent ParentSoup debate over online ``decency'' laws:
``I have two boys, and I decide what they see and learn.''
``Let me hear the kids talk about this. I don't think they will agree.''
``Yes, ban offensive material.''
``What is offensive?''
``Excuse me? Who died and left you God? . . . Sadly, it's people like you who put Hitler in power.''
The Family Planet site, updated daily, recently hosted discussions titled ``Pacifiers: Friend or Foe?'' and ``Circumcision: To Cut Or Not To Cut,'' as well as electronic debates on spanking, gay marriages and nightmares.
The 2-year-old, Disney-owned Family World featured articles on ``Safeguarding Pets From a Ghoulish Halloween,'' ``Leaving the Kids Home Alone'' and ``The Piggy Bank Dilemma.''
The National Parent Information Network recently included the text of the secretary of education's annual State of American Education address and a list of the ``Top 10 Questions to Ask When Choosing Your Child's School.''
Such sites, as the rest of the Internet, should only get more popular. The Children's Partnership, a Washington-based advocacy group, reported in September 1994 that 35 percent of all homes - 39 percent of homes with children - had a personal computer, a figure that's expected to rise to 50 percent by 2000.
About 11 million American homes had at least one computer with a modem so they could go online. More than 35 million people used the Internet, with more than 100 million expected to be using it by 2000.
``Print is still basically a one-way conversation,'' said Nancy Evans, co-founder of ParentSoup, at its January launch. ``Online lets us create the interactivity of a real kitchen table.''
``It's a community for all kinds of parents,'' said the other ParentSoup founder, Candice Carpenter. ``I'm a single parent, half my friends are divorced dads, my business partner and friend Nancy has a `nuclear family,' and we all need help when it comes to raising kids. . . . This is a service for people like us.''
But, as with all online services, one to be used cautiously. As HomePC magazine warns in an article on the NetGuide Magazine Web site, ``Anonymous sources aren't foolproof.''
In fact, The Children's Partnership is working with the National PTA and the National Urban League on a parents' guide to the Internet, due out in June, with its opinion of what's good and what isn't, said co-director Laurie Lipper.
``There is some great stuff on there, but not everybody has access to it,'' Lipper said. MEMO: ParentSoup's World Wide Web address is http://www.parentsoup
.com/; Family Planet can be found at http://family.starwave.com; Family
World at http://www.
family.com; National Parent Information Network at
http://ericps.ed.uiuc.edu/npin/
npinhome.html.
by CNB