Heading out to celebrate St. Paddy's Day, and maybe feeling just a trifle guilty about leaving your precious angels behind?
Well, you shouldn't, says a study by professors at the University of Sheffield. According to their research, kids whose parents had active social lives scored better on a standardized test than kids whose parents did not.

Professors Sarah Brown and Karl Taylor looked at the social lives of 3000 parents, examining their memberships in resident's associations, sports clubs, volunteer organizations or church groups, and most importantly how many friends they had. That data was compared with their children's scores on standardized literacy, numeracy, and verbal tests. Those children whose parents had many connections and active social lives scored between one and four percentage points higher.

What's interesting about this research was that it took parent's educational attainment and class – which are pretty reliable predictors of a kid's academic achievement -- into account and found social activity was important across the board.

Researchers know that kids with good social skills tend to do better in school, but no one's yet looked at the parents. “It could be that the social activities mean there is a network for discussing child development that benefits the children, or that it helps instill values such as a good work ethic,” Dr. Taylor told the Times of London. “It’s also possible that the children of parents who socialize a lot are more sociable themselves."

For a lot of us (okay, me) the social life can be the first thing to go when we get busy with and exhausted by work, kids and household responsibilities. If nothing else this study reminds us that not only are those playdates with friends the best thing for our own sanity and balance, they can be good for our kids as well.