In Attendance

Your children are better off with you in prison than at war. Not that those should be your only choices.

An Australian study found that kids with dads doing time had problems, but not necessarily for lacking a housebound role model. The causes of their difficulties were more likely from "socio-economic status, marital disorder, an unstable family life, mothers who drink and smoke and have poor mental health."

That let's-blame-the-mom result segues nicely into the new study just published in the Journal of American Medicine on at-war families. With more moms than dads left behind, there is a 42 percent greater chance of a child's maltreatment during deployment than at other times.

While the results noted above suggest it's moms more than kids who suffer when a family is (temporarily) single parented, dadalones are still coming in for some "what are you thinking?" criticism. According to another new study, and all other things being equal, a single American father is less likely to have health insurance for himself and kids than a single mother.

Cultural, environmental and hereditary aspects do influence the decision. Both Thing 1 and Thing 2 have put on shows of stoicism, either out of fear of the doctor (they have learned how often an office visit confirms bad news) or in deference to my own preference not to see medical personnel to whom we are not related. And the study does confirm that an average man is less likely to go to the doctor for himself than an average woman ... and suggests — without actually judging — that gender tendencies influence when children see their pediatricians.

Still, it all ends up a very mixed result for the children.

** It is all well and good to know from studies and statistics what is going on with the average kid. But who has the average kid? **