The Parenting Crisis: Why Families Are Turning to AI for Support
At 3 a.m., one mother scrolls through sleep-training forums while her baby wails in the next room. Another toggles between TikTok advice and contradictory Google results. It’s a familiar ritual of modern parenting—too much information, too little guidance.
According to the U.S. Surgeon General’s August 2024 advisory, “Parents Under Pressure,” parental stress has reached the level of an urgent public-health issue. The report’s findings were sobering: 41% of parents said they are so stressed they cannot function most days, and 48% said their stress feels completely overwhelming. Despite the proliferation of parenting apps, wellness tools, and smart monitors, most parents are left to navigate early childhood on their own.
That’s the gap Joy’s parenting app aims to close.
Joy Parenting Club, a San Francisco–based startup, has raised a $14 million Series A, co-led by Raga Partners and Forerunner Ventures, to scale what it calls the most advanced AI model built specifically for parents. With 50,000 paying members already on its Joy Parenting Club app—and plans to double that number by early 2026—the company is merging AI-powered insights with human expertise to help parents navigate their most vulnerable years: feeding, sleep training, behavioral challenges, and cognitive development.
“For too long, parents have been left to crowdsource their confidence. With Joy, every parent now has a village of experts—supercharged with AI—available in their pocket 24/7.”
Emily Greenberg, co-founder and president of Joy.
How Joy’s AI Parenting App Combines Technology, Human Expertise and Empathy
At the heart of Joy’s platform is Emily, an AI parenting assistant that’s available around the clock. Parents can chat with Emily anytime for personalized answers that build on previous conversations, creating a dynamic, contextual experience that feels less transactional than chatbots and more like a living guide.
Unlike ChatGPT or search engines, Emily’s knowledge is derived from a proprietary dataset of over 1,200 of its expert-written articles and more than one million of its conversations with parents, all vetted and maintained by Joy’s team of certified specialists. On the backend, human expertise powers the AI—ensuring accuracy, empathy, and cultural nuance.
When the questions move beyond what AI alone can handle, Joy offers live sessions: for an additional fee, parents can book 30-minute one-on-one video calls with certified experts specializing in sleep, feeding, lactation, behavioral therapy, and cognitive development. These specialists aren’t anonymous avatars—they’re real humans trained to support the everyday realities of raising children.
The company’s current focus is early parenting (ages 0–5), where most parents experience the steepest learning curve. By late 2026, Joy plans to extend its expertise to parents of children up to age 10, expanding both its AI training and its roster of expert personas to include financial coaches and travel specialists.
Parenting, Personalized: How Joy’s AI Adapts to Every Family’s Needs
Joy’s philosophy is that parenting is an art, not a checklist. Every family brings its own rhythm, culture, and context—something traditional parenting apps rarely accommodate.
The platform tailors its recommendations to each household, taking into account cultural norms and personal values. “Parents have different comfort levels with the sleep environments they create for their babies,” Greenberg explains. “Joy meets them where they are—whether they’re in a one-bedroom apartment or a multigenerational home.”
This cultural sensitivity extends beyond sleep and feeding habits. Joy’s experts address complex, emotionally charged situations—like divorce, sibling dynamics, and school transitions—offering proactive, evidence-based guidance rather than generic advice. Parents describe feeling “seen,” not judged.
How Joy Turns Parenting Data Into Daily Support and Confidence
Each month, Joy members receive curated toolkits centered around developmental milestones or themes, such as picky eating, transitioning to solids, school readiness, or coping with change. These kits combine digital education with hands-on activities that reinforce both cognitive growth and connection.
Members also gain access to the Joy Shop, which offers 20% off all products curated by Joy’s experts—from feeding tools to sensory play kits. Rather than pushing affiliate links, Joy’s model ensures that every product recommendation is contextually relevant to the parent’s stage and needs. Behind the scenes, Joy’s experts collaborate with one another—something Greenberg calls “the anti-fragmentation layer.”
“Parents shouldn’t have to bounce between five apps for sleep, feeding, and development,” she says. “Our experts talk to each other so parents don’t have to repeat themselves.”
Why Venture Capital Is Betting Big on Parenting Technology
For David Heller, co-founder and co-chair of the investment committee at Raga Partners who co-led Joy’s Series A, the appeal was immediate.
“Joy blends empathy, design, and AI into an experience parents trust,” Heller says. “In one of the world’s most universal yet under-innovated markets, Joy is building the platform that will shape how the next generation of families live and grow.”
Parenting has quietly become a serious venture category. According to PitchBook, U.S.-based parenting and family-tech startups drew nearly $1.4 billion in venture capital in 2021 alone, as investors began to recognize the economic and emotional infrastructure surrounding early childhood as a massive, under-digitized opportunity.
Some of the most notable players illustrate just how broad—and fragmented—the category remains:
- Happy Baby (Happy Family Organics), which pioneered the organic baby food category and was acquired by Danone in 2013 for reportedly over $250 million, raised approximately $23–30 million in debt and equity before its exit. The brand continues to perform strongly in grocery aisles—and notably, founder Shazi Visram now serves as an advisor to Joy, bridging two generations of innovation in early parenthood.
- Maven Clinic, which provides comprehensive women’s and family health benefits across fertility, maternity, and parenting, has raised more than $425 million, including a $125 million Series F in 2024. Maven’s move beyond clinical health into family and parenting support has paid off—solidifying its position as the category leader in holistic, employer-backed family care and proving that parenting is a powerful adjacent vertical to women’s health.
- Lovevery, the Montessori-inspired toy and subscription company focused on cognitive development from birth to age five, has raised more than $100 million to date. Its success underscores how parents are increasingly investing in tools that nurture early learning and connection—a mission that closely parallels Joy’s emphasis on developmental growth and daily rituals.
- Snoo, the smart bassinet from Happiest Baby, raised $23 million to reinvent infant sleep through motion, sound, and responsive AI—transforming a baby product into a category-defining hardware brand.
- Tiny Health, which offers at-home microbiome testing for infants and expectant parents, raised $8.5 million in a 2024 Series A to personalize early immune health.
- Winnie, a childcare marketplace connecting parents with vetted local providers, has raised $15 million to date to modernize childcare access.
- Huckleberry, focused on baby sleep tracking and predictive analytics, has raised over $13 million to optimize nap and bedtime routines.
- LittleBits, a STEM learning and play company that blurred the line between education and parenting tech, raised over $70 million before being acquired by Sphero in 2019.
Despite this influx of capital, the space remains highly fragmented and inefficient. Most products and apps solve a single slice of the parenting journey—sleep, feeding, childcare, or education—without continuity or communication between them.
That’s where Joy’s model stands out. At $12 per month, it offers 24/7 access to both AI and human experts, undercutting the cost of a single private sleep consultation and democratizing access to support once reserved for high-income families. By integrating expert insight, emotional guidance, and personalized product recommendations into one seamless platform, Joy is positioning itself as the connective tissue for the modern parenting economy—one that blends technology, empathy, and cultural context into everyday family life.
Joy’s Parenting Guidance Ends Where Medical Advice Begins
Joy’s platform deliberately stops short of medical advice. While its experts include postpartum and pediatric nurses trained to spot red flags, the app’s role is coaching and education, not telehealth. “If a parent messages us about a fever, we tell them to call their pediatrician,” says Greenberg. “But if it’s about baby acne or nap transitions, we’ve got them covered.”
That clarity—knowing where coaching ends and medicine begins—builds the trust that makes Joy’s model work. Parents are often vulnerable, sharing their deepest anxieties about feeding, sleep deprivation, and relationships. The app’s human layer ensures they never feel reduced to a dataset.
How AI and Technology Are Rebuilding the Village for Modern Parents
With fresh capital in hand, Joy parenting app plans to expand its AI training, grow its expert network, and build partnerships with leading parenting brands. The company’s north star remains simple: to bring confidence, not chaos, back to early parenthood.
“Parenting is expensive, stressful, and isolating,” Greenberg says. “We want to level that out—because every parent deserves access to support, not just those who can afford a $300 sleep consultant.”
If the old saying is true—that it takes a village to raise a child—Joy’s wager is that technology can help rebuild it.
Author’s Note: : The Future of AI and Empathy in Everyday Life
This article is part of my ongoing Forbes series exploring how technology, empathy, and design are reshaping human experiences—from health and wellness to parenting and longevity.
For more on the rise of personalized, AI-powered care models, read:
