Short videos, elders' experiences, and merchants' recommendations all offer conflicting and inconsistent advice: parenting online schools use AI to turn evidence-based parenting knowledge into usable actionable answers that new parents can apply right in their "next step".
From pregnancy to the child turning 6 months old, new parents have to make one feeding decision after another for their newborn family. However, most of the information available to first-time parents comes from short videos, elders' experience and merchant recommendations, which often contradict each other. "Parenting Online School" aims to turn professional, evidence-based parenting knowledge into the "next step" that every family can use at specific moments with AI. The project was established in early 2026, and its core product was officially launched in October. It is currently seeking seed round financing, hoping to introduce investors who recognize its public welfare philosophy.
First-time parents do not lack information, but lack reliable "next steps"
According to the Investigation Report on Influencing Factors of Breastfeeding released by the China Development Research Foundation in 2019, the exclusive breastfeeding rate of infants under 6 months old in China was 29.2%, lower than the world average of 43% at that time. The Breastfeeding Promotion Action Plan (2021—2025) issued by the National Health Commission proposes that this proportion should reach more than 50% by 2025.
The report attributes the low exclusive breastfeeding rate to factors such as formula milk marketing, insufficient support from medical institutions, and lack of support from families and workplaces. 42.6% of the mothers surveyed said that hospitals or nursing institutions had advised them to practice mixed feeding. From the perspective of the Parenting Online School team, most mothers are not unwilling to breastfeed, but are blocked by several barriers including cognitive gaps, marketing interference, family disagreements and lack of professional support. The parenting concepts pieced together from fragmented information on the Internet are also likely to cause disagreements within the family and pose hidden dangers to children's health.
Founder Wang Huali is a professional public welfare practitioner who has been deeply engaged in the fields of environmental protection, health and parenting for more than 20 years, and once served as a torchbearer for the Beijing Olympic Games. He found that the number of people that individual public welfare voices can reach is very limited; in the past, attempts to build a comprehensive public welfare platform were also difficult to scale due to the excessively high cost of content production and services. After generative AI matured, it became possible to convert professional experience into personalized services in batches at an affordable cost for the first time.
The demand side is equally clear. Data from the National Bureau of Statistics shows that the number of births nationwide in 2025 was 7.92 million. Although the birth population is decreasing, every newborn family will go through a concentrated window period for parenting decision-making. First-time parents have a strong willingness to learn actively and are willing to pay for "peace of mind, companionship and fewer detours". Parenting Online School chooses to start with exclusive breastfeeding, first win the trust of new families, and then extend to health needs with a longer cycle.
The AI that remembers the child: from passive Q&A to active companionship
The core team of Parenting Online School currently has three members in total: Wang Huali is responsible for content and operation, and there is also a senior Web technology development leader and a mini-program development leader. The team spent half a year completing product design and development, and invited real users to participate in the test since August 2026. In order to realize "improving cognition in communication instead of one-way indoctrination", multiple course versions have been iterated successively. At present, the product has launched four sections: growth, AI Q&A, member social interaction, and personal files. Six core courses are being launched one after another, and more than 100 test users have participated in product verification.
Compared with general AI Q&A and traditional maternal and infant platforms, the team focuses on three differentiated aspects. The first is long-term memory: the AI answers questions based on the specific child's age in months, feeding status and medical history, and automatically organizes growth files, where information such as complementary food records, vaccine reminders, and growth curves can be viewed in one place.
The second is active service. Most traditional platforms passively answer questions or push generalized content. The AI of Parenting Online School will actively remind parenting tasks, identify risk signals, and continuously track the child's growth and changes. According to the team, during the test, a mother with high blood pressure who was exercising to lose weight planned to take ibuprofen to relieve migraine. The AI reminded her based on her file that the combination of antihypertensive drugs and ibuprofen, plus dehydration caused by exercise and sweating, may increase the risk of acute kidney injury, and it was recommended to consult a doctor first.
The third is a professional and evidence-based vertical content system. The course content is manually reviewed, and the AI dynamically updates on this basis, using atomized knowledge points combined with gamified incentives, no assessment is carried out, focusing on helping users improve their cognition; the system naturally supports multiple languages and has the foundation to face overseas users. The team also emphasizes the boundary of the product: Parenting Online School does not replace doctors, and will guide users to seek medical treatment in time in case of emergency.
This system also precipitates Wang Huali's many years of one-on-one consulting experience. He once served a family whose baby had anemia, eczema and constipation at the same time, and the child's symptoms still recurred after visiting many hospitals. He helped the parents sort out the diet records, adjust the food nutrition plan and keep tracking, and the symptoms gradually relieved after about a month. The team is converting such experience into knowledge that AI can call, so that more families can get the same meticulous companionship.
Develop members first, then build a trust-based service ecosystem
Parenting Online School adheres to commercial neutrality, promises to protect exclusive breastfeeding and the well-being of infants and children, does not take traffic conversion as the goal, but takes changing users' cognition and behavior as the core indicator. Commercialization is promoted in stages: the first stage is dominated by member subscription, with an annual fee of 520 yuan, and an invitation mechanism is set up at the same time. Users who invite 3 valid members can get the full annual fee refunded, which reduces the participation threshold and expands coverage by word of mouth.
In the second stage, the team plans to launch a green, low-carbon and carefully selected mall for mothers, infants and women, and build a credible offline service network in the same city. In the third stage, it plans to enter the domestic service industry: open free training to practitioners, do not charge commission from employers, and only charge a real experience certification fee of 1% of the practitioners' income. The team said that the platform's revenue will continue to feed back to the public welfare cause of healthy parenting. In terms of product route, Parenting Online School starts with feeding in the first 1000 days of life, and then gradually covers disease care, personality cultivation, nutrition and health, and chronic disease food nutrition, and finally moves to full-life-cycle health services.
At present, the project has been officially launched and market promotion has started, and it is looking for investors who recognize the public welfare philosophy. The team's long-term vision is to promote the exclusive breastfeeding rate of infants under 6 months old in China to 80%, so that scientific parenting and healthy lifestyles can benefit more families.
"From protecting wild animals to guarding the well-being of infants and children, this original intention has never changed," Wang Huali said. "AI gives us the opportunity to spread professional experience on a large scale. Helping more parents avoid detours is the greatest significance of what we do."