It seems that the underlying assumption here is that people who are highly educated and work in "clinical child development or similar" are superior at giving advice. Is this actually true? I'm also skeptical of the idea that support is best given as advice as opposed to something tangible.
If you indeed have a way to give superior advice to parents and result in presumably superior outcomes for parents and their children compared to the default, which is a parent who uses their own resources wouldn't it be more profitable to just open up a daycare?
In any case, I wish the Trustle team good luck, but I'm very skeptical that this is superior to just talking to people who have kids already. Kids are unique, but what constitutes a good environment isn't as broad as the landing page and marketing make it sound. Furthermore, if one does believe kids are unique that is with odds with the technology aspect of this business. Either kids are so unique that technology can't really be used to make things more efficient, or kids can be roughly grouped into categories, in which case - surely said information about children is already out there?
Finally - if blogs and content out of the web cannot be trusted, why should your experts' advice be? There are very smart people out there who have written books and blog posts. What's the value add beyond that? Since you're only paired with a single person, what if there is contradictory advice between your experts? Would you not simply be back at square one then?
I too have my reservations (though I want to try this out), but:
> if blogs and content out of the web cannot be trusted, why should your experts' advice be? There are very smart people out there who have written books and blog posts.
The problem is, there are orders of magnitude more articles written by content marketers - between papers, lifestyle magazines, presell pages, social media groups, infographics, YouTube videos, etc. there's tons of it, and it has much better SEO than legit sources. I've worked next to some content marketers and seen how this is created - mostly, by mindless copy-pasting from other content marketers, and occasionally rephrasing things to avoid accusations of plagiarism.
The hard part of finding sources on-line is filtering out low-quality sources and misinformation. If Trustle can help with that - if they can develop and maintain a trustworthy reputation, this will be a service worth paying for.
I think there are two challenges with content on the web. First, there's all the marketing stuff you mentioned that could be low quality.
Second, even for the high-quality stuff (and there is some really great stuff out there), it isn't necessarily right for a specific family. There's no way for a blog to understand a families specific goals or philosophy, or to take into account the unique situation of the child or parents. Families are complex, and we hope our coaches can help a family sort through that complexity and get the info that's right for them.
I think friends can be an excellent resource for support - and they often are! I think the key thing that is missing at times is that friends speak from their own experience, not from a background of child development. This can mean that the advice is skewed. Having experience being a parent is great, but what works for one parent doesn't always work for another. This is where Trustle (or a trusted expert) can come in.
Take sleep for example (a really common challenge we support parents with) - a lot of people have STRONG philosophical beliefs about sleep. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that - but research doesn't support that ONE approach to sleep is better than another (for example, sleep training vs. co-sleeping). However, the science of sleep can inform supporting a parent to make a plan that aligns with their philosophy (rather than their friends) AND is informed by science. We can help parents understand sleep patterns, the importance of timing of sleep (night and naps), pros and cons or various sleep training, shaping, or supporting approaches (etc, etc), and how to do it safely.
I think this is the main difference.
We can support parents in thinking though challenges and decisions as a partner - they bring their experience and expertise on their family and child - we bring the expertise on child development to inform choices.
If you indeed have a way to give superior advice to parents and result in presumably superior outcomes for parents and their children compared to the default, which is a parent who uses their own resources wouldn't it be more profitable to just open up a daycare?
In any case, I wish the Trustle team good luck, but I'm very skeptical that this is superior to just talking to people who have kids already. Kids are unique, but what constitutes a good environment isn't as broad as the landing page and marketing make it sound. Furthermore, if one does believe kids are unique that is with odds with the technology aspect of this business. Either kids are so unique that technology can't really be used to make things more efficient, or kids can be roughly grouped into categories, in which case - surely said information about children is already out there?
Finally - if blogs and content out of the web cannot be trusted, why should your experts' advice be? There are very smart people out there who have written books and blog posts. What's the value add beyond that? Since you're only paired with a single person, what if there is contradictory advice between your experts? Would you not simply be back at square one then?