The Center on Rural Parenting exists because raising children has become more complex than parenting alone - and the organizations serving rural children and families are being asked to respond to more issues with limited time, capacity, and support.

Today, children are growing up inside rapidly changing social, digital, educational, economic, health, and community environments. Rural-serving organizations are navigating school systems, online platforms, public health information, childcare gaps, local opportunity, workforce pressures, broadband access, artificial intelligence, emerging technologies, and shifting expectations about what children, families, and communities need to thrive.

In rural communities, these challenges are often discussed separately: education in one room, broadband in another, health in another, workforce somewhere else, and technology moving faster than many communities have been resourced to understand. CRP brings these conversations together.

CRP strengthens their ability to communicate, listen, adapt, and support the child-raising environment and provides communications technical assistance, capacity-building resources, and practical learning materials for the organizations and communities working closest to rural children and families - including the people, places, systems, stories, technologies, and relationships that shape how children are cared for, taught, protected, understood, and prepared for the world ahead.