- Information you want your grandparents to know arrives on your phone every day.
- 70% of mothers felt a gap in perception with their own mothers regarding pregnancy and childcare.
- Bridging the generation gap and assisting in an environment where families help each other to raise children.
(We spoke to...)
Eversense Corporation
Grandparents NINARU Product Owner Nagisa Watanabe
70% of moms were troubled by their own mothers' anachronistic advice.
Editorial:How was "grandparents ninaru" developed?
Watanabe:We have been developing the "ninaru" series of child-rearing support applications to provide information to those who are pregnant or raising children. Grandparents Ninaru" was released as a grandparents' version of "Ninaru" last November for Android and this January for iOS. In the course of developing child-rearing support apps, we have come to realize that many mothers are suffering from a gap in perception of pregnancy and child-rearing between the mothers' generation and their own mothers, who are grandmothers. We decided to develop this app because we believe that it is essential to provide grandparents with accurate information on current pregnancy, childbirth, and childcare, and to update their knowledge in order to close this gap.
Editorial:What exactly was the generation gap?
Watanabe:For example, there used to be a belief that during pregnancy, one should force oneself to eat for the sake of the baby. Today, however, the view is that it is not necessary to force yourself to eat when morning sickness is severe. We are also often asked about the problem of tooth decay. In the past, adults would put food in their mouths to soften it before passing it on to the baby, but this practice can pass tooth decay to the baby. Also, many mothers are troubled by the generation gap in child-rearing, as grandparents still believe that mothers should stay close by and take care of their children until they are about 3 years old, and grandmothers are reluctant to leave their children at day-care centers and go to work.
Editorial:I wonder if the grandmothers are aware of these perceived discrepancies by the mothers.
Watanabe:When asked if they have ever felt a generation gap with their grandparents regarding pregnancy, childbirth, and childcare, nearly 70% of mothers answered "Yes. On the other hand, when the same question was asked of grandmothers (whether they feel a gap with their daughters), only 40% of grandmothers answered "yes. Grandmothers are not aware that their know-how is a bit outdated or that their daughters feel a gap. We felt that these gaps in mutual recognition needed to be promptly remedied.
Editorial:It would be unfortunate if the compassion of a grandmother who is supposed to be the most understanding person in the world was instead causing stress.
Watanabe:Yes, I did. Although grandmothers are supposed to be the senior mothers who watch over us closest, I wanted to do something about the situation where we were not happy with each other due to these gaps.
Putting useful information for pregnancy and childcare in the palm of your grandparents' hands every day.
Editorial:Are there any points that you took into consideration for the application for seniors?
Watanabe:While it is natural to provide information on trends in child-rearing, since this service is aimed at people who have experienced pregnancy, childbirth, and child-rearing, we value our attitude of not denying what happened back then, but rather of updating our knowledge together with them from the same perspective. We also made the text and icons larger than those of other "ninaru" series, and tried to create a design and operability that is easy to read even for seniors.
Screen designed for easy viewing by seniors
Editorial:How often are messages and information delivered?
Watanabe:You will receive a message every day during your pregnancy and until your first birthday. After that, you will receive a message once a week.
Editorial:Who is preparing the article?
Watanabe:All articles are created in-house. The number of articles we distribute amounts to several thousand, including those accumulated from the "ninaru" series. They cover almost all areas related to child-rearing. In the future, we would like to focus on content on how to interact with daughters and grandchildren.
Daily messages about the growth of pregnant mothers and their babies
Full content on pregnancy, childbirth, and childcare, created under the supervision of physicians and midwives
Editorial:What is the ratio of male to female users actually using the application?
Watanabe:It's about 70% women and 30% men. At first, we thought that 90% of the respondents were grandmothers, so we were surprised to find that there were more grandfathers than we had expected. Right now, the message content is the same for both grandparents, but in the future, we would like to personalize the messages and deliver different messages for men and women.
Editorial:How is the response?
Watanabe:We have received a lot of positive feedback, with mothers writing on Twitter, "I didn't know such an application existed. Many grandparents are surprised at the difference from when they were pregnant and gave birth to their children, saying "I didn't know about all this" and the information they receive every day.
Ms. Watanabe has written numerous articles on childcare.
Editorial:What is your outlook for the future?
Watanabe:We believe that we still need to raise awareness of "grandparents ninaru". Ideally, we would like to create a natural flow of users, with mothers downloading "ninaru" when they become pregnant and grandparents downloading "grandparents ninaru. To this end, we are working daily to introduce the download procedure so that as many people as possible can easily use the application. Currently, we only provide information for children up to 4 years old, but in the future we would like to enhance our articles so that we can provide information for children up to elementary school age.
After the interview
Many things happen around us that common sense that we used to believe and doubt become insane with the changing times. This is especially true in the fields of pregnancy and child rearing. Grandparents Ninaru" is a reassuring application for both senior mothers (mothers-in-law and grandparents-in-law) and new mothers to help them feel comfortable with each other. As seniors now have smartphones as a matter of course, "grandparents ninaru" will become a must-have application for grandparents in the future.
Grandparents NINARU Official Web Site
https://eversense.co.jp/product/sofuboninaru
