Resources for Families | Making Caring Common

How To Be an Ethical Parent in the College Admissions Process

Parents and other primary caregivers shape their children’s moral development in myriad ways. They also often influence every phase of the college preparation, search, and admissions process.

Yet the troubling reality is that a great many parents are fundamentally failing to prepare young people to be caring, ethical community members and citizens. That’s true in part because of the degree to which parents have elevated achievement and demoted concern for others as the primary goal of child-raising.

In these guideposts from Harvard’s Making Caring Common, we explore how parents can guide their teen ethically, reduce excessive achievement pressure, and promote key ethical, social, and emotional capacities in teens in the college admissions process.

7 Tips for Raising Caring Kids

We’ve developed a set of guideposts to raising caring, respectful, and ethical children, along with tips for putting them into action. These guideposts are supported by many studies and by the work that our various organizations have conducted over several decades with families across America.

Tips for Encouraging Honesty

How can you encourage honesty in kids? Watch the video and review our tips for parents.

5 Tips for Cultivating Empathy

Empathy is at the heart of what it means to be human. It’s a foundation for acting ethically, for good relationships of many kinds, for loving well, and for professional success. And it’s key to preventing bullying and many other forms of cruelty. The following are five guideposts from Harvard’s Making Caring Common can help parents cultivate empathy in children.

Caring School Communities: Questions to Ask Schools

Parents and caretakers want to ensure that their children are safe, respected, and able to learn when they are at school. But many parents and caretakers feel that they don’t know what happens inside school walls. When parents and school leaders talk together about what the school is doing to create a safe and caring community, everyone can learn and engage in positive change efforts. You can set up a time to ask these questions of the principal, assistant principal, or guidance counselor. You can send a letter with some or all of the questions. You can also share them with the parent representatives on your school’s parent council. You can suggest that parents and school staff work together to pick a few questions that are most important for your school community and meet on a regular basis to work on them.

Sexual Harassment and Misogyny Resource List

The following is a partial list of resources for parents interested in preventing misogyny and sexual harassment.

These resources offer useful activities, information, websites, programs, and curricula. While we think each of the identified resources contains valuable information, we do not endorse all the recommendations or views in these resources. Some of the resource descriptions listed below have been pulled from organizational websites.

Family Resources, ParentingMCC TeamOctober 12, 2018Gender Bias

Girls Leadership Program Checklist

Based on our research and the wisdom of practitioners, and based in part on recommendations from the Girl Scout Research Institute, we have created the following easy to-use guide to help parents identify high quality girls’ leaderships programs.

Parenting, Family ResourcesAli CashinOctober 11, 2018Gender Bias

Girls Equity and Empowerment Resource List

These websites complement our report Leaning Out and offer useful programs, research, resources, and/or activities to promote girls’ and women’s equity and empowerment.

Family Resources, Topic Bias Bullying, ParentingMCC TeamOctober 11, 2018Gender Bias

5 Tips for Preventing and Reducing Gender Bias

We all carry biases that are based on gender; throughout our lives we receive daily messages about what is expected of different genders. These biases become ingrained and it’s often impossible to completely get rid of them. But, if we can be more aware of our biases, we have a better chance of counteracting them. Use these tips and suggestions for understanding and addressing bias with your kids.

Family Resources, ParentingMCC TeamOctober 11, 2018Gender Bias