What we can't do for you

The BPN is a very large network of parents (21,714 subscribers as of today) in the San Francisco Bay Area that is run by a very small number of volunteer moms and dads. We do not have any paid staff and we do not have meetings - we are entirely an online, email-based network. The BPN volunteers are parents, many with full-time jobs, who are running the network as a hobby in their "spare" time. Therefore, we are not able to personally respond to requests from reporters and researchers. We won't be able to forward your query to parents we know, or answer questions for you on the phone, or post your question on our website. If you have a deadline that's a few days away, BPN is probably not going to work for you.

Many of the discussions from our newsletters are archived to our website, and this may be how you found us. It is OK with us if you quote some of the discussions on our website as long as you credit the Berkeley Parents Network. However, we have no way to contact people whose responses appear on the website, because when we archive them, we remove all identifying information for privacy reasons. We do not keep any information about subscribers other than their email addresses, so the only way to contact BPN subscribers is to post to one of the email newsletters.

What we can do for you

We can post your query to our weekly "Announcements" newsletter. This newsletter is emailed to 21,714 local parents every week, usually on Fridays (but not reliably on Friday!). You can post a message yourself if you are a BPN subscriber -- post by Wednesday afternoon for your message to appear in the following Friday's edition. You may subscribe to BPN if you live locally and are either a parent yourself, or you work with children or children/parenting issues. It is free to subscribe. Here are some links:

• Subscribe
• Post an Announcement
• Help Pages

What your message should include

Briefly describe your article or your research, and provide an email address where interested parents can contact you. Your message should be short - 4-5 sentences, maximum - because it will appear in a newsletter with dozens of other messages and we have a limit on length. Details can be provided via your website or you can offer to mail them to interested people.

Keep in mind that your message will be read by thousands of people, so, to keep responses manageable, you should be as specific as you can about what you are looking for. Most of our subscribers have young children, though all ages are represented, and we have many subscribers who have not yet given birth or who are still in the planning stage. We also have a separate weekly newsletter for parents of teenagers. Therefore, please be sure to mention whether you are interested in a particular age.