Meg Gerritson, 31, remembers the moment she felt like a mom stalker.

Gerritson, of Hull, Mass., was filling her car's gas tank at a station down the street from her house. She noticed a young mom walking into the store, pulling her son in a wagon behind her. The woman looked laid-back and fun. Her son held a surfboard. Gerritson, who lives in a beach town, loves to surf and had a young son about the same age.

"Who is that?" she thought to herself. "I've never seen her before." She was at the stage in early parenthood that can feel so isolating.

"I thought to myself in the car, 'Do I follow her?'" Her immediate next thought: "That's so creepy! I'm not a stalker!"

That's also when it clicked.

There had to be an easier way to make friends with other like-minded mothers.

As it turns out, two other moms -- Christa Terry and Julia High -- had the same idea. Why couldn't they do for moms what eHarmony and Match had done for singles?

They found each other while doing research on this business idea. Beyond sharing an entrepreneurial spirit, they had each had their own challenges finding the right playgroup.

Gerritson's son Jack, now 2, has severe nut and egg allergies. She quickly figured out how this would affect social relationships when she signed up for a local moms' group outing. She had asked the organizer if Jack's food allergy would be a problem, and was assured the playdate would be safe for him.

There were at least a dozen 1-year-olds at the event, and one boy was eating peanut butter crackers. Gerritson, whose son is sensitive to even being touched by someone who has eaten peanuts, approached the boy's mother and said, "I hate to say this, but would you mind putting those away?"

The woman looked at her and said, "Oh, it's okay. Your son doesn't have to eat them."

At that point, Gerritson felt uncomfortable enough that she simply left the event early.

"I was trying to make friends, not enemies," she said.

One of her business partners, Terry, 34, of Beverly, Mass., had two premature children and found it difficult to find other moms who could relate to her concerns about taking them out when they were babies.

And across the country, High, 35, of Kirkland, Wash., had just relocated from the East Coast and didn't know anyone. She remembers being in a park shortly after moving and watching her 2-year-old play with a little boy about the same age.

"I was chatting up the boy's mom. We were getting on so well, so I asked for contact information. It turned out -- of course -- that they were from Canada, and had just stopped at this park to take a break from their road trip."

Gerritson, Terry and High have launched Mom Meet Mom, a national website for mothers seeking friends that takes into account location and personality. The site promises to eliminate the awkward and accentuate the connection.

Women can register their personal information for free, along with answering a short survey about the type of parent they are and the type of friends they are seeking. Even details like allergies, or other health considerations, can be factored in. The site uses geomapping and social mapping to generate the best matches.

It launched in Boston last Mother's Day and rolled out nationally by the end of July. The founders have at least 10,000 registered users in the U.S. and plan to expand internationally in a few weeks, with their eyes on Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia.

Now, research (and common sense) suggests that attracting and keeping meaningful friendships is not a problem unique to mothers. The State of Friendship in America Report, published by LifeBoat, which describes itself as a movement of people rediscovering friendship, claims most Americans are in a friendship slump and that the country faces a friendship crisis. The 2013 report says only a quarter of adults in its survey reported being truly satisfied with their friendships. They singled out Gen Xers as the most in need of true friends.

Incidentally, that generation is now at an age when many people are in the throes of caring for young children.

And so, the playground is the new singles bar.

"It's a shot in the dark," Gerritson said. You may be a vegan who ends up investing a lot of time in a conversation with a woman who can't imagine a meal without meat.

Their site is designed for mothers, even expectant ones, with children of any age.

She touted a success story: One of her friends met a match through the site who only lives a mile down the road from her and has a daughter the same age. The two turned out to be so compatible that they've gone into business together.

Some friendships just click.

The circumstances of that evening made ideal kindling for the explosion in store.

I was running late to an event, for which we couldn't find a sitter. I was exhausted near the end of a hectic weekend and already making mental lists for the week ahead.

It was in this perfect storm that my husband noticed the spilled nail polish on my daughter's bedroom floor. The very nail polish I had explicitly forbidden her from using on the new carpet.

My voice reflected how upset I felt at my tween daughter.

It was a loud and angry voice.

But rather than apologize and attempt to clean up the mess, which had happened some time earlier and been conveniently ignored, the child began crying herself, as if she was the victim in this scenario.

The more she cried, the angrier I got.

And the louder I yelled.

Any rational person could see the cycle between my yelling and her crying, but neither of us was having a rational response by this point.

It's fair to say that I lost it.

I screamed at her to stop crying and slammed my hand on her doorframe so hard that the sharp pain startled me. I had never hit something so hard out of anger. It knocked a degree of sense into me. I stopped rushing to get ready. I stopped yelling. I sat on her bed and told her to clean up her room while her father worked to get the stain out of the carpet. I talked to her about why I had gotten so angry. She apologized, and we hugged before I left.

I felt completely drained.

It's exhausting to get angry and yell. I grew up in a house with parents who yelled, one much more scarily than the other. While it's never fun to be yelled at as a child, I have learned that it feels far worse to be the enraged yeller. There's the physiological discomfort that accompanies rage: Your pulse picks up, eventually pounding; your breathing becomes shallow and jagged; you feel slightly out of control.

For those of us who relish a sense of control, this temporary sense of its loss is perhaps the most damaging piece of rage -- beyond the remorse, beyond the hurt.

As part of the generation of parents who gave up corporal punishment to discipline our children, we defaulted to yelling to get their attention and let them know that we really meant business. In the short-term, and with some children, yelling might work. But in the long-term and with many other children, it is useless.

Intellectually, I knew that getting angry never made a lasting change in my daughter's behavior. And how ironic that what would upset me most about her -- her struggle to regulate and control her emotions -- was exactly how I was responding to her.

The day after the nail polish incident, I opened a drawer of my nightclothes and found a large box with a bow tied around it. Inside were two books from my bookshelf: "Love and Anger: The Parental Dilemma" and "Loving Your Child is Not Enough: Positive Discipline That Works," both by Nancy Samalin and co-authors. I had intended to read both at some point but hadn't gotten around to it.

I asked my daughter if she had put them in my drawer. She said she had. She had read them both and said I might find them useful.

I read the slim volume on anger first. It offered a straightforward, simple message: Parents can be driven to periodic madness by our children, yet we rarely talk about it. "Love and Anger" is more than two decades old, but the advice is as practical today as when it was first written. Learning to respond in a calmer way takes some self-awareness and practice.

The book helped change my perspective. I was done giving away my own power and allowing a child to push my buttons to that extent. The bruise on my hand for the rest of the week reminded me that I was never going to let myself get that angry again.

It's been a few months since that incident. I've certainly had moments when I've felt a surge of anger at some misbehavior or disrespect.

But I am more aware of how I'm feeling when I start to get upset. I deliberately lower my voice when I want to raise it. I realize the only way to regain a measure of control in such a situation is by controlling myself. 

Recently, I asked my daughter: "Have you noticed a difference in the way I respond to you?"

"Yes," she said.

"You can do the same thing. You can reclaim your own power in how you choose to respond to us," I told her.

The purple bruise eventually faded from the side of my hand.

The lesson is still fresh.

The fundamental test of wills between parents and children hasn't changed. But the ground rules may have.

Previous generations have worried about changing social values for as long as there have been young people to socialize and judge. But our young people's lives have a murkier terrain than ours did: They consume more media in more ways than any generation prior. They are both hyperconnected and more isolated. They flourish in ways we didn't, yet struggle with skills we took for granted.

As parents, we must ask: Does all their media-laced time create an outsized influence of the most corrosive elements of pop culture? Does every new technology -- such as self-destructing instant messages that experts tell us will be used by tweens and teens primarily for sexting -- make our job even harder? Our children are growing up with a relentless barrage of messages more pervasive than the ones that blanketed us as children.

So, too often, we feel we are parenting against the worst of what we see around us. We are parenting against the bad behavior we read about and watch constantly.

It's harder to parent against culture. It takes more self-discipline and effort at a time when we are managing more work and more demands than ever.

But this is the type of parenting that gives us a chance at raising the sort of humans we want our children to become.

"Parenting against culture" should become our mantra, repeated to ourselves during the moments when it seems so much easier to give in. Because this is what it really means:

When you tell your child that her tone is unacceptable and make her apologize, you are parenting against disrespect.

When you insist your children clean up their messes, wherever they have made them, you are parenting against unaccountability.

When you teach your child how to stand up to a bully picking on another child, you are parenting against apathy.

When you talk respectfully to people with different views within earshot of your child, you are parenting against incivility.

When you admonish your child to work harder when he gets a bad grade, you are parenting against entitlement.

When you invest as much time and emotion in your child's academic achievements as in her extracurricular activities, you are parenting against a culture that undervalues intellectualism.

When you let your children fail, you are parenting against perfectionism.

When you take away their gadgets at meal times and other times when they need to focus, you are parenting against the fallacy of multitasking.

When you limit their involvement with social media, you are parenting against the notion that privacy has no value.

When you show them how to save money, you are parenting against instant gratification.

When you encourage them to do their own homework and manage their own time, you are parenting against dependency.

When you resist the urge to buy much of what they want, you are parenting against rampant consumerism.

When you purchase age-appropriate clothing, you are parenting against the hypersexualization of their childhoods.

When you instruct your sons on how to treat girls fairly and with respect, you are parenting against a culture of sexism.

When you foster your child's sense of empathy and compassion toward others, you are parenting against violence.

When you enforce rules and consequences that make you unpopular, you are parenting against irresponsibility.

When you praise your child's effort and acts of kindness, when you hold them when they are hurt, when you listen with your undivided attention, you are parenting against a culture of distraction and disconnectedness.

It's important to remember that you are not alone. Most parents reject much of what pop culture glorifies.

Most of us hope we are passing on values from the culture we create in our homes rather than the one projected into our homes. But no one raises children in a bubble, and there are peer parental pressures just as mighty as the ones our children face.

But when enough of us decide to parent against culture, that's precisely when we begin to change it.