In 1980, 77 percent of all American children lived with both parents; 18 percent lived with their mother only, with four percent living with neither parent, and two percent with their father.  In 1998, the percentage of children living with both parents had dropped to 68 percent; 23 percent lived with their mothers alone, and 4 percent each with their father or neither parent.

(Source: U. S. Census Bureau, Current Population Reports, P20-514, and earlier reports; and unpublished data; in the U. S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2000 [120th edition], Washington, DC, 1999, p. 58.)

"It doesn't take a superstar; but it takes a man to be a dad."

(Source: Tim McGraw, The National Fatherhood Initiative PSA, on WLS 890 AM, Chicago, Illinois [accessible at www.wlsam.com].)

It takes fifteen pages of academic text for two Columbia University researchers, reviewing the child substance abuse literature, to tell us what we all ought to know:  kids pay attention to what adults do.  "[I]n our efforts to protect children from the harms of alcohol and tobacco use, we may have been overlooking or understating a key factor in the relationship between substance abuse and children's health, namely, parental use of alcohol and tobacco."

The authors do point out the relative paucity of attention to adult-specifically parental-influence upon children in most prevention programs:  "Many of the current substance use prevention programs, particularly those that are school-based, focus in large part on peer influences."

Indeed, the Columbia researchers delineate two consequences of this inattention to parents: "This emphasis on elements that are seemingly unrelated to parental behavior has left many parents feeling that a) their own behavior is not a significant determinant of their children's mental and physical health, and b) they are relatively helpless in the fight against childhood substance use or behavioral pathology."  Nothing could be further from the truth: particularly for parents, our children watch, hear, copy and mimic our words, and actions.  For better or worse, adults are role models for kids all around us-no matter what Charles Barkley believes.

The authors conclude, "It is time we broaden [the] focus to include adult tobacco and alcohol use in our national discussion of factors related to youth substance use...." And we thought it was all about cartoon camels....

(Source: Linda Richter and Daniel M. Richer, "Exposure to Parental Tobacco and Alcohol Use: Effects on Children's Health and Development," American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, vol. 71, no. 2 [April 2001].)