Food was always a big part of my life. My grandfather was one of 14 kids and his parents had a pasta factory so as a kid he and his siblings would sell pasta door to door. After he became a movie producer he opened up De Laurentiis Food Stores - one in Los Angeles and one in New York.

When fast food is not a treat but a dietary staple the children surf the internet all day in dark corners of the room and are bombarded with latest gadgets. Things replace parental standards.

As the proud father of two teens and past Chairman to the Presidents Council on Physical Fitness and Sports I am committed to educating parents and especially young people on ways to live a long healthy and active life.

Parentage is a very important profession but no test of fitness for it is ever imposed in the interest of the children.

Let children read whatever they want and then talk about it with them. If parents and kids can talk together we won't have as much censorship because we won't have as much fear.

Another parent's different approach raises the possibility that you've made a mistake with your child. We simply can't tolerate that because we fear that any mistake no matter how minor could have devastating consequences. So we proclaim the superiority of our own choices. We've lost sight of the fact that people have preferences.

Vaccines save lives fear endangers them. It's a simple message parents need to keep hearing.

Being a parent is not for the faint of heart. I may joke about knowing fear but the fact is the first time I ever knew real fear was the day Charlotte my first child was born. Suddenly there is someone in the world you care about more than anything.

Therefore when I considered this carefully the contempt which I had to fear because of the novelty and apparent absurdity of my view nearly induced me to abandon utterly the work I had begun.

I'm famous by default. I came out of the womb and people wanted to know who I was because of my parents.

It was a mixed blessing to have famous parents. It was tough to go to auditions and be bad since I couldn't be anonymous.

When we were growing up our parents somehow made it clear that being famous was good. And I mistakenly thought that if I was famous then everyone would love me.

The importance of human life should be universally respected - and that refers to children before they are born and after. All children have the right to be brought up in a loving two-parent family where the notion of divorce is not even possible.

My parents did a great job raising me and my two sisters. We all graduated from high school and we all graduated from college. So to be a good representative of my family is probably my greatest accomplishment thus far.

When I'm home the heart and soul of our family is in the kitchen. Growing up my parents both worked so dinnertime was for family - the TV was off. I think it's important to grab that time and really make it special even after a tough day.

It's one of the worst-kept secrets of family life that all parents have a preferred son or daughter and the rules for acknowledging it are the same everywhere: The favored kids recognize their status and keep quiet about it - the better to preserve the good thing they've got going and to keep their siblings off their back.

There aren't a lot of ironclad rules of family life but here's one: No matter how much your parents deny it - and here's betting they deny it a lot - they have a favorite child. And if you're a parent so do you.

Playing guitar was one of my childhood hobbies and I had played a little at school and at camp. My parents would drag me out to perform for my family like all parents do but it was a hobby - nothing more.

It is from the progeny of this parent cell that we all take our looks we still share genes around and the resemblance of the enzymes of grasses to those of whales is in fact a family resemblance.

Getting a family into work supporting strong relationships getting parents off drugs and out of debt - all this can do more for a child's well-being than any amount of money in out-of-work benefits.

By measuring the proportion of children living with the same parents from birth and whether their parents report a good quality relationship we are driving home the message that social programmes should promote family stability and avert breakdown.

Whole communities are growing up without fathers or male role models. Bringing up a family in the best of circumstances is not easy. To try to do it by placing the entire burden on women - 91% of single-parent families in Britain are headed by the mother according to census data - is practically absurd and morally indefensible.

My family although they're very large on both my parents' sides they don't know much about their family tree. Occasionally they try to dig but they can't get very far and it's baffling. In Dublin it seems that so many public records were wiped out it's proven to be very difficult so I know very little.

Here's the thing: the unit of reverence in Europe is the family which is why a child born today of unmarried parents in Sweden has a better chance of growing up in a house with both of his parents than a child born to a married couple in America. Here we revere the couple there they revere the family.