4/87Estimated number of referees at children’s sporting events who are attacked each year by parents: 100
6/87Percentage of Americans between the ages of 8 and 17 who say they have five or more living grandparents: 8
12/88Percentage of child psychologists who advise parents of pre-school children to “confirm Santa’s existence”: 40
11/89Number of times Rajiv Gandhi mentioned his mother or grandfather in an Independence Day speech in August: 47
3/89Rank of drugs, kidnapping, and car accidents, among the dangers to children most feared by parents: 1,2,3
8/89Amount a Florida mother is seeking in a suit against a teenager who stood up her daughter for a prom date: $49.53
10/90Number of requests for New Kids on the Block lyric sheets received by the Parents’ Music Resource Center this year: 3,000
Number of requests for 2 Live Crew lyric sheets: 1,500
2/90Percentage of American parents who say their grown children’s old bedrooms have been “preserved as a shrine”: 4
Number of former major league players whose last names are palindromes: 7
6/90Number of months after the Valdez spill that George Bush put his oil-barge company holdings in a blind trust: 1
Number of oil spills for which the company’s corporate parent has been responsible since Bush bought the stock: 200
7/90Percentage of parents who say they want the option of having their child’s school photograph retouched: 30
5/91Portion of Hallmark’s 1,200 different Mother’s Day cards that do not include the word “mother” or “mom”: 4/5
12/92Percentage of college students who say that their political opinions are similar to those of their parents: 44
4/92Ratio of the average number of children an American mother has to the number an American welfare mother has: 1:1
5/92Chances that an American child living with both biological parents will have to repeat a grade in school: 1 in 9
6/92Chances that a child in New York City lives in a household headed by neither parent: 1 in 7
1/93Number of states where a single parent earning 75 percent of the poverty level is eligible for welfare: 5
11/93Percentage of economics majors at Ivy League colleges who say at least one of their parents has smoked marijuana: 23
11/94Number of months of government-paid leave allowed Swedish parents under a new law passed in June: 12
11/94Chances that a U.S. teenager has not spoken to either parent for more than ten minutes during the last month: 1 in 5
12/94Percentage of American children who say they use flattery to get their parents to buy them things: 16
3/94Number of the 61 children murdered in Chicago last year whose mothers first gave birth as teens: 47
6/94Rank of Father’s Day among days on which the largest number of collect calls are made: 1
5/95Percentage change since 1960 in the number of Americans who belong to a Parent-Teacher Association: -44
7/95Percentage change since 1970 in the number of American children born to one white and one non-white parent: +253
11/96Number of years Bob Dole’s paternal grandparents were on welfare: 6
4/96Percentage of American children of divorced parents who have not seen their father in the last year: 40
9/96Chance that an American parent requires that children do their homework before watching TV: 1 in 12
1/97Percentage change since 1989 in the number of children living in poverty who have at least one working parent: +35
2/97Number of times that the mother-in-law of Washington, D.C., mayor Marion Barry has run for president: 2
6/97Percentage of Planned Parenthood donors in 1994 who also donated to Operation Rescue that year: 17
11/98Estimated number of American women arrested for child abuse since 1977 after using drugs or alcohol while pregnant: 200
11/98Years in prison to which New Jersey’s Amy Grossberg was sentenced last July for killing her newborn: 2.5
11/98Average number of Americans under the age of 18 killed by their parents or caretakers each day: 5
2/98Chance that an American parent believes that teenagers are usually “lively and fun to be around”: 1 in 4
5/98Percentage of parents who say that they would abort a fetus found to be predisposed to obesity: 11
5/98Factor by which having an overweight parent increases a child’s chances of becoming obese: 2
12/99Percentage of U.S. children who say their greatest wish for their parents is that they make more money: 23
4/99Number of Ivy League egg “donors” that Options Fertility Registry’s school newspaper ads have found since 1997: 18
5/99Chance that a mother of dependent children depicted on a prime-time network TV show holds a paying job: 1 in 3
7/99Height, in feet, of a scarlet “A” a Sunnyside, Wash., woman put in her family’s yard last fall to protest her father’s adultery: 7
10/00Price in Kenya of 100 units of nevirapine, a drug that prevents mother-to-child HIV transmission: $874
12/00Number of couples who will each receive $5,000 this year from IUMA.com for naming their baby Iuma: 10
2/00Years after 1993’s Baby Jessica custody ruling that both her birth parents and her adoptive parents filed for divorce: 6
2/00Number of textbook reproductions of George Washington Crossing the Delaware retouched by a Georgia school last year: 2,322
Number of parental complaints that prompted the school to decide that Washington’s watch fob resembled genitalia: 0
9/00Number of times Maureen Dowd’s New York Times column has likened a male political candidate’s style to lactation: 3
1/01Average age of a new U.S. grandparent in 1999: 47
7/01Percentage of George W. Bush’s first 189 appointees who also served in his father’s administration: 42
8/02Number of northern Nigerian states in which being divorced and pregnant is enough evidence for an adultery conviction: 12
2/03Chances that a new student at the University of California at Berkeley last fall had at least one foreign-born parent: 2 in 3
5/03Percentage, respectively, of the U.S. fathers and mothers responsible for child support who do not pay it: 26, 36
5/03Fine that Britain’s education minister has proposed levying on parents whose children are chronic truants: $3,900
2/04Rank of the death rate for women in childbirth in Afghanistan’s Badakhshan region among the highest ever recorded: 1
4/04Amount Iraqi parents were paid for naming sons born on Saddam Hussein’s birthday after him: $200
Minimum number of Iraq’s Saddam Husseins who have officially changed their names or are in the process of doing so: 300
7/04Amount NBC’s parent company, General Electric, stands to earn from Iraq’s reconstruction: $600,000,000
1/05Percentage by which British university graduates are less likely than non-graduates to phone their mothers regularly: 20
Percentage by which they are less likely to make regular visits: 50
5/05Minimum age at which Massachusetts allows boys to marry, with parental permission: 14
3/06Number of half-siblings who have found each other on a website for children of anonymous sperm donors: 1,316
8/07Percentage of British children aged seven to eleven who say they “worry about global warming”: 34
11/08Amount that Paris Hilton’s parents have donated to John McCain’s campaign: $4,600