Are you PC or Mac?
On a Mac, iPhoto will take advantage of your RAW images. You can adjust the colors and exposure in a non-destructive manner like other RAW processores.
With iPhoto you can order very nice printed books, regular prints, make web galleries through iWeb, make enhanced photo podcasts, email, and burn images to discs from inside one application. The ease of all this might out weigh the control of more professional software, at least for family photos. It can also automatically download from your camera.
I got my dad started on Photoshop CS2, Bridge, and iView Media Pro. It is the software I use. So when he has questions, he has free tech support. It is a little over his head though.
The advantage of a cataloging software like iView is the ability to keyword images, and then find images using those keywords. I can now find all of my friends, family, jobs, and subject matter in a few seconds in iView. This has a learning curve and time investment though.
Adobe Camera Raw comes with Photoshop, is free, and will work on almost all cameras. So learning this software can be a one time deal, rather than using the RAW software that comes with each camera you buy. I don't know if Camera RAW will work with elements.