Parents. Are we all drinking too much?

Getting the kids to school on time, combining work and family commitments and keeping on top of the hundreds of other jobs and responsibilities needed to keep a family running mean modern life can be a hectic juggling act for today's parents.

Then, add to this intensive media scrutiny about our children's lives, from what we're feeding them, how we discipline them and how many hours they're allowed to spend on their playstation. It's no wonder that parents are feeling under intense pressure to not only have it all but do it all as well.

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Time to relax.

Lindsay, a 34-year-old single mum from Musselburgh certainly agrees: 'Most days I'm running around either trying to get the kids to school or picking them up on time and getting the tea on. By the end of the day I'm knackered. After the kids get to bed, I'll have a glass of wine to help me relax and then it's up again the next day to do it all again! I do feel that there's a lot of pressure on parents sometimes — it seems like we're always being made to feel guilty about something. You can't always be a perfect parent and mostly we're just trying to do our best'.

"By the end of the day I'm knackered. After the kids get to bed, I'll have a glass of wine to help me relax"

Relaxing at the end of the day with a glass of wine or a beer or going out at the weekend to let off steam are ways of coping with this increasingly stressful life. But how often does a hangover creep into your family life? How many of us haven't put a DVD on for the kids on a Saturday morning and then gone back to bed when we've had a few too many drinks the night before? Or maybe we've dodged taking the kids to the park and opted for the nice dark cinema instead to nurse our hangover.

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Social life and children.

Dad of three, Colin, is certainly familiar with this scenario: 'My family means the world to me, I work long hours and don't see them much in the week so weekends are precious. But I also love my Friday night out with the boys and I have to admit, I sometimes feel a little worse for wear the next day, which is supposed to be my day with the kids. Standing on the sidelines at my son's football match with lots of screaming 11 year olds and a stinking headache isn't enjoyable and sometimes my mind is elsewhere — back home in bed!'.

Combining a social life and children means that it's almost inevitable that sometimes they're going to collide. But with so many parents working, sometimes the weekends are the only quality time that children get to spend with them. Do our children deserve better than to have to share their parents with a hangover? Have your say now. . . .