Parenting information is abundant. What’s missing is any way to tell which of it is true. Founded Parent is a place to check — every answer traced to a named, checkable source, and honest about how far that source lets you trust it.
There was a time when searching for something meant you would probably find it. You typed a question, and the internet did its best to answer it. That is not quite the world we live in anymore.
Today, nearly everything you scroll through — every result, every feed, every video that plays before you have chosen to watch it — is arranged to hold your attention rather than tell you the truth. And those two goals pull in different directions. The confident claim travels further than the careful one; the bold headline outperforms the honest “it depends”. Somewhere in the last decade the loudest voice and the most reliable one stopped being the same thing — and for questions about your own child, that is a genuinely worrying place to have arrived.
Founded Parent was born out of that noise: a world drowning in information and misinformation in more or less equal measure, where a worried parent at midnight has no real way to tell them apart.
Hi — I’m Carolyn. I am a specialist physician, an anesthesiologist by trade. I have spent the last twenty years caring for patients in a tertiary care “big city” hospital and, more recently, a smaller hospital in a rural community.
If I have learned anything over those two decades, it is that medical information is everywhere, and that what we know is always changing and expanding. And with so much of it now a tap away, I find it harder than ever to tell reliable information from claims merely delivered with conviction.
At work, there is a process for uncertainty. When a question comes up that I cannot answer off the top of my head, I know what to do: research the evidence, find the guidelines and the studies, weigh the findings against the methodology, and look for potential sources of bias. I use all of that to make an informed decision.
Then I had kids of my own, and the advice started arriving from everywhere. From friends and family, from strangers online, from the packaging. Almost none of it came with a source. Some of it was probably right — there was simply no way to tell which.
So I set out to build something. Something my friends could use, and something my colleagues could recommend to the parents in their clinics: a search engine that does the work for you.
Founded Parent is that work, done ahead of time. It does not roam the whole internet sorting good from bad. It reads only from a fixed list — paediatric guidelines, systematic reviews, peer-reviewed research, all there to see on the evidence page — and tells you plainly how strong the evidence really is. Even when the honest answer is that nobody quite knows yet.
That last part matters to me most. So much parenting advice is handed to us with a confidence the research underneath does not support. On Founded Parent you will find answers graded Limited, and answers graded Insufficient, because I would far rather tell you that than smooth it over and hope you do not notice.
I am not your doctor, and this site has never met your child. But the reading is done, the sources are named, and every one is there for you to check.
A general chatbot answers from everything it has ever read, including forums, blogs and marketing copy, and it cannot tell you which of those it leaned on. Founded Parent can only read from a fixed list of approved sources: national guidelines, systematic reviews, randomised trials and established expert organisations. If the answer is not in those, it says so rather than filling the gap.
Every answer carries a plain-language grade showing how strong the underlying evidence is, and every source is listed with a working link so you can read it yourself. You can see exactly how we grade evidence and what Founded Parent cannot do.
Founded Parent carries no advertising, no sponsorship and no affiliate links. No company pays to appear in an answer, and no source is included or excluded for commercial reasons.
Educational information only. Not medical advice, not a diagnosis, and no doctor-patient relationship is created by using this. Founded Parent has not examined your child and does not know their history, so its answers may not apply to you. Never delay or disregard advice from a qualified health professional because of something you read here. In an emergency, call your local emergency number.