It's ten p.m. Do you know where your children are?

“It’s ten p.m. Do you know where your children are?” became a widely recognized American public-service announcement line used by local TV stations as a nightly reminder for parents to supervise children, especially amid mid‑20th‑century concerns about juvenile delinquency and curfew violations. The message was typically delivered by station announcers or on-screen crawls near the 10:00 p.m. news hour and was adapted by many markets rather than tied to a single author. It later entered popular culture through parodies and references in film, television, and music, functioning as a shorthand for parental responsibility and moral panic about youth out at night.

The line is a pointed rhetorical question: it assumes that a responsible parent should know a child’s whereabouts at night and implies that not knowing is negligent or risky. Its power comes from compressing a broader social anxiety—crime, peer influence, and unsupervised youth—into a simple time-stamped prompt. As a repeated broadcast formula, it also reflects how mass media can act as a civic authority, nudging private behavior through public reminders. In later usage, the quote often carries an ironic or nostalgic tone, evoking an era of broadcast paternalism and communal norms about family oversight.

1) “It’s 11 o’clock. Do you know where your children are?”
2) “It’s 10 o’clock. Do you know where your children are?”
3) “Do you know where your children are?”