The following list of evaluated “best bet” parenting websites was developed by the Parent Education Workgroup (PEW) of the Partnership for Children, a workgroup of the Charlottesville/ Albemarle Commission on Children and Families (CCF). PEW, a group of local parents and parent educators, meets monthly from August to June, and works to promote, coordinate, plan, and share parenting classes, workshops, and resources. Most of the research was done by Anderson Gould, a 2006 University of Virginia Intern for CYFS. Our goal is to make parent education and resources more visible and accessible to parents and parent educators in our community.
A recent internet search found 16, 300, 000 hits for “parent education”, 4,640,000 hits for “parent education evaluation”, 941,069 hits for “parent education books”, 914,000 hits for “parent education magazines”, 903,921 hits for “parent education organizations” and 36,909 hits for “meta analysis parent education”. Obviously, there is an incredible amount of information on the web about parent education. Unfortunately, there are as many bad sites and resources as there are good ones. There are many “for profit” sites trying to sell things or your email address to others. In our brief time researching parent education, it is obvious that there is a great deal of useful information on parenting on the web, you just need the time to do the research to find it.
This list of “best bet” parenting web sites is attempting to give parents and parent educators a head start on this research. Most sites offer free handouts on a variety of helpful parenting topics and challenges. We hope these handouts can be downloaded and shared with parents in our classes and workshops. We think these proven resources can lead to the development of practical parenting “toolkits” that can strengthen our collective efforts as parents and parent educators and lead to more successful parenting experiences for parents and “our” kids.
