"Parents are taking a more active role in the lives of their children than they did 10 years ago, according to data released today by the U.S. Census Bureau. For example, in 2004, 47 percent of teenagers had restrictions on what they watched on television, when they watched, and for how long, up from 40 percent in 1994 (Table 11).

A Child's Day: 2004 examines the well-being of children younger than 18 and provides an updated look into how they spend their days. This series of 30 tables published by the U.S. Census Bureau is based on the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) and addresses children's living arrangements, family characteristics, time spent in child care, academic experience, extracurricular activities and more.

According to this latest look into the lives of children, about 68 percent of 3- to 5-year-olds had limits on their television viewing, an increase from 54 percent in 1994. More children 6 to 11 found they, too, were living with restrictions on television: 71 percent in 2004 compared with 60 percent 10 years earlier.

In 2004, 53 percent of children younger than 6 ate breakfast with their parents every day (Table 7). That compared with only 22 percent of teenagers who ate breakfast with their parents each morning. Those percentages increased at the dinner table, where 78 percent of children younger than 6 ate dinner nightly with their parents, compared with 57 percent of teenagers.

... Children 1 to 2 were read to an average of 7.8 times in the previous week of the survey (Table 9), while children 3 to 5 were read to an average of 6.8 times in the previous week.

About half of all children 1 to 5 are read to seven or more times a week; 53 percent for 1- to 2-year-olds, and 51 percent for 3- to 5-year olds."

"The family is the corner stone of our society. More than any other force it shapes the attitude, the hopes, the ambitions, and the values of the child. And when the family collapses it is the children that are usually damaged. When it happens on a massive scale the community itself is crippled. So, unless we work to strengthen the family, to create conditions under which most parents will stay together, all the rest - schools, playgrounds, and public assistance, and private concern - will never be enough."

Marriage Nurtures the Affections, Especially Toward Children 

The more studies document better outcomes for children whose parents are married, the more contrarians seek to deny the obvious. Now some legal scholars and sociologists are warning against confusing the effects of matrimony with the effects of living with two biological parents, whatever formal legal arrangement they have or don't have. Yet an analysis of two studies from 2003 that compares differences between children reared by two adults, married and unmarried, by Robin Fretwell Wilson of the University of Maryland School of Law, concludes that the estate of marriage itself, not just biology, does indeed confer clear advantages to children.

Wilson reviewed two studies from the Journal of Marriage and Family. The first compared differences between children living with two unmarried parents (of which one is the biological parent) with children living in a married stepfamily (also in which one parent is the biological parent). It found statistically significant advantages accruing to children living in stepfamilies relative to their peers in unmarried households, including a reduced likelihood of delinquency and increased likelihood of better school performance measures, including verbal ability and sharing expectations of attending college. These children were also less likely to be suspended or expelled from school. All these correlations remained statistically significant in tests controlling for the biological parent's relationship to the child, family stability, and socioeconomic differences.

The second study tracked the investment of biological fathers in four different types of families (married biological parents, cohabiting biological parents, married-based stepfamilies, and single biological mothers living with a boyfriend who is not the father). The study yielded-after controlling for ways that married and unmarried fathers might differ as well as demographic factors-statistically significant correlations showing that unmarried fathers spend about four hours less per week with their children than do their married peers. The unmarried fathers also rated themselves "less warm" toward their children. Likewise, the biological children of cohabiting parents consistently received smaller investments from their fathers than did biological children of married parents, whether blended or intact.

Seeking to explain why a wedding band yields these pluses for children, Wilson believes that the findings of the two studies reflect major differences in the relationships between the parents. "Marriage tends to instill and bring along with it certain relational benefits for the adults, like permanence, commitment and even sexual fidelity, which redound to the benefit of children in the household."