When you need to reach the parents of kids in your church—whether it's about an upcoming youth event or a last-minute schedule change—finding those contacts shouldn't feel like solving a puzzle. Previously, the best you could do was pull "all household adults" for kids in a list, which often included adult children, relatives, or other family-adjacent adults who weren't actually the parents you needed to contact.
Today, we're introducing parent and guardian household roles to make it easy to identify and communicate with parents.
What's new
In People, you can now set parent/guardian roles in the household modal and see those roles at a glance when viewing profiles in households. Parents and guardians are grouped separately from other adults, making it immediately clear who the parents are.
In Church Center, household adults can view and update their household roles on their own profiles, empowering your congregation to keep that information up to date without extra work on your end.
On Check-Ins stations, the parent/guardian role appears when editing a household, giving your check-in volunteers helpful context about family relationships.
New list capabilities
We've added two new list conditions to help you work with parents and guardians:
"Households > is parent/guardian of active children": Pull lists of parents directly without going through child profiles first
"Households > is sole parent/guardian of active children": Easily identify single-parent households for targeted support or communication
We've also added a new list inclusion option: household parents of matches. This lets you build a list of children (say, all 6th-8th graders) and automatically include their parents in your results—perfect for when you need to email parents about an upcoming youth event or schedule change.
Coming soon to Registrations
Parent/guardian roles will be available in the Registrations admin soon, so you can see and manage household roles when viewing a profile’s household.
Rollout timeline
Parent/guardian roles are available to opt into starting today. If you'd like to turn this on for your organization now, look for the opt-in banner on the People > Household tab. You must be an organization administrator to opt-in your organization.
On February 3, 2026, parent/guardian roles will be enabled for all organizations.
When parent/guardian roles are enabled for your organization, all adults in households with children will be set as parent/guardians—you can adjust individual households as needed after that. If you would like to review affected households, use the new households tab to review households with parents & guardians.
If you'd like to learn more about how households work in Planning Center, check out our household guide.
Families are a big part of churches and we hope this makes it easier for you to identify and communicate with the parents in your community.
The People Team,
Zane, Usborn, Shawn, Shane, Kody, Julia, Gabi, Fred, Dave, and Benson