Do something nice and see what happens. Collect canned goods for the needy. Help an elderly person change a flat tire. Volunteer at the local li- brary. Inevitably, someone usually but not necessarily older than you will say something like this: " you must have been raised right."

Being " raised right" is a classic American apothegm. But we know its meaning better its definition. If asked, we might talk about strong family values and morals, a solid but not dogmatic religious background, and loving parents who made us brush our teeth at night before tucking us into bed with a prayer and a lullaby. Ozzie and Harriet stuff.

Sometimes we might define the term by those who are its opposite: The ones raised wrong, the children and adults who fill our jails and prisons, the frantic voices on the other end of the child-abuse hotline.

But even if we know what it means and understand the potential for disaster if we don't do it well, raising our children " right" has become a pragmatically slippery ideal for much of contemporary society, a lost paragon that one Florida State University researcher believes may never be retrieved unless there is a moral rebirth in American homes. "

Raising children is the most important thing we do in our society," says Dr. Murray Krantz, an FSU child development specialist and author of a new book, Child Development: Risk and Opportunity (Words Work, 1994). " If we did a better job raising them, ultimately people would be healthier, brighter, more productive, more creative, more loyal, more everything. Unfortunately, that's not what most of us are doing."

Krantz (Ph.D. Penn State) has been studying child development for nearly 30 years (including four years as a day-care operator), and what he has found won't let even Ozzie and Harriet off the hook: Even children from traditional nuclear families have a high risk of failing in school and in life if their parents fail to make them their top priority, from conception to graduation. Poor-quality day-care and too-busy parents have eroded the foundation children need to be successful, he says. "

Every genetically normal child has the potential to be the next Einstein or Martin Luther King Jr.," he says. " It is our commitment to them that makes the difference, that allows them to reach their full potential."

A quick look at criminal statistics (juvenile crime in Florida has increased 74 percent since 1983; prison admissions have doubled), or education report cards (36 percent of all 17-year-olds in Florida cannot compose a letter using basic English grammar) reveals that a lot of kids are not reaching their full potential. While politicians and others react by building more prisons or by condemning America's overworked educational system, Krantz says the blame rests squarely at home.

" I don't believe the school system fails our kids," he says. " I believe the kids fail the school system. I have known thousands of teachers, well-meaning, hard-working, very dedicated, but the kids are not listening to them, and it looks like we may never get them to pay attention. When they walk in the door, they are not ready to learn. They have an attitude." And Krantz is quick to point out that they don't learn this attitude at school: they bring it with them from home.

"We might call a kid slow, but he or she wasn't born that way," he says. " They got that way. Then you got kids on the other end who are so-called 'gifted.' They aren't gifted. The gift was that they got an enormous amount of stimulation early in life.

"There is an almost one-to-one relationship between what we do with our kids during the first few years of their lives as parents, and what happens in their teen-age years and beyond."

Due in part to economic necessities and increasing gender equality in the work force, the traditional nuclear family (dad works, mom stays home to care for the kids) has nearly eroded away in this country. According to the U.S. Census, 1987 marked the first time that a majority of mothers of infants under one year old were working outside of the home.

But if both Mom and Dad are at work, who's watching the kids? Studies show that nearly 90 percent of all infants under the age of one are being cared for in a home environment, either by a relative, family friend or professional nanny. But once they reach their first birthday, children are more and more likely to find themselves in cramped day-care facilities, often under the care of untrained personnel. While the long-term impact of day-care on child development is still being studied, early research indicates serious problems:

Day-care children are disproportionately more demanding, independent, disobedient, aggressive and " bossy" than children who stay at home.

Twenty or more hours a week of non-parental care significantly increases the risk of insecure infant-mother attachments.

Eight-year-olds who had attended a " minimal standard day-care" facility full time since infancy showed poorer academic performances and lower standardized test scores than children who had experienced part-time care or exclusive parental care.

Most kids who attend day-care full time will spend over 2,000 hours a year (about half of their waking hours) in the care of someone other than their parents. This adds up to 10,000 hours over the first five years of their lives.

In addition, Krantz notes that in " bad" day-care facilities, staff turnover is extremely high, meaning that some children may have from 30 to 50 different caregivers before entering kindergarten.

" When they spend these thousands of hours in the company of disinterested, unresponsive and unaffectionate caregivers in uninteresting and unstimulating environments," Krantz says, " damage to their cognitive and social-emotional development is inevitable."

The result is that many kids will be emotionally and intellectually unprepared for school. They will defy authority and they will look only to peers for approval while avoiding any strong relationships with adults. This is a pattern, Krantz says, that often is a prelude to school drop-out, juvenile delinquency and adult crime.

While kids in high-quality day-care (highly trained caregivers, low turnover and low adult-to-child ratio) have not demonstrated these same risks, there is a shortage of such facilities in America. And even when available, they are usually out of the price range of the middle-class parents who constitute most two-career families.

But low-quality day-care is not the only problem Krantz sees with child- rearing in the '90s. Because both parents work during the day, a child often receives very little positive attention from the people he or she most depends upon for that attention.

While many sociologists have argued that this attention deficit can be made up with " quality time," Krantz says that idea is a myth, that parents are often too overwhelmed at the end of the day to do more than fill their children's basic needs.

" Let's say you pick up your kids from the day-care center at 5:30 p.m., or maybe you have latch-key kids who have been home all afternoon unsupervised. What happens next? Somebody's got to cook, and then everybody eats, someone cleans up, and then the parents have worked all day and they want to relax, maybe watch TV, and the kids have to do their homework and get theirÊbaths over with. Before you know it, it's time for bed. I'd argue there's no room in that life for so-called quality time."

Despite the negative picture his research has painted, Krantz allows that even very busy parents can create a loving, nurturing environment for their children if they undergo a " rebirth of morality" in which their priorities are rearranged: kids must be at the top of the list. "

It ought to be a long-term, absolute commitment," he says. " For most people, I don't think their children are the number-one priority, and I'm not sure they ever were in our society."

He calls it his " pie-in-the-sky" scenario, and he admits that it may be unrealistic. But he predicts that if society could somehow be reorganized so that careers, politics and social concerns are all put in the back seat, behind the kids, then society would be a better place for everyone.

" I think we could cut our crime problem by 90 percent," he says. " If someone committed a crime, we would all gasp. There are other countries where it pretty much is that way, like in Japan. They take their kids seriously over there, and they aren't afraid to walk from the house to the car at night."

By preserving the family, he says, the Japanese have managed to keep crime down and their economy up. " The Japanese style is to put the kids on pedestals. The American style is to build more cell blocks. We have chosen to clean up the mess rather than prevent it in the first place."

Krantz, 51, has raised three children with his wife, a family therapist in Tallahassee. He thinks he is a good dad, " and now a good grandfather," but he admits that he made some mistakes. He agrees that parenting is not an easy job, and good parenting is even harder, but he does offer some suggestions:

Wait Until You're Ready. Krantz says too many people, because of their " absolute insistence on living the middle- class lifestyle," have had to put their work above all else. He suggests that people wait until they are reasonably financially secure before having children. " Is that too radical of an idea?," he asks. " Can you be pragmatic about it? Wait until you're in your 30s, when you're more financially stable. Have kids when they can be the most important thing in your life because that's what they deserve and that's what they need."

Demand High-Quality Day-Care. No child under the age of two should ever see the inside of a day-care facility, no matter how good it is (" That's something that just must be done." ), but if you have to use day-care for older children, Krantz suggests that you use the best possible facility available (see separate story, above).

Build a Sense of Authority. Create for your children a structured, non- arbitrary sense of respect and authority. This is not simply blind obedience. " Authority means being the kind of person that your children will spontaneously respect. You can do that by sharing emotions. You want to be good at some things and your kids should know about it. You can become an authority by showing power and skill and by being consistent with rules of structure that are not arbitrary."

Be There Emotionally. This is what Krantz calls the " most critical element" to good parenting. " We can talk generalities about communication and respect, but what really being a parent is all about is the shoot-from-the-hip, day-to- day kind of interaction: Getting them in and out of the car seat, changing their diapers, being there when the kid falls down and gets hurt. If you're not there (as when the child is in day-care), you are not going to pass that test. But even if you are there, there are a lot of stupid things you can do. You can be condescending or degrading to your children in everyday situations. Sometimes all it takes is a wink in the morning for the kids to know you care."

Get Educated. Research indicates that most parents base their parenting skills on recollections of their own childhoods and by watching television, Krantz said. " If people are learning anything about child development by watching sitcoms, then we are in a lot of trouble," he declares. He suggests authoritative handbooks that can give parents a " reasonable expectation" if they do something this way or that way. While his book is designed for the college classroom, he says it could serve parents well. " The difference between me and Dr. Spock or others is that I have one foot deeply imbedded in the science and research and the other foot trying to translate that research into practical information."

Don't Think it's Too Late. Krantz suggests that it's " never too late" to get to know your kids. " I hate to use the word salvage, but that is basically what I mean. You're not going to change mistakes you already made, like that jungle gym you always said you would build in the back yard but never did, but don't sit around bemoaning what you should have done."

The vague issue of family values has become a hot topic in America, thanks in part to the last Republican administration and former Vice President Dan Quayle's public feud with Murphy Brown, a fictional TV character who had a child out of wedlock. Parental leave, flextime work schedules and a " parental bill of rights" have all been debated in Congress, and President Bill Clinton has a chief advisor on the family, William Galston, as a member of his Domestic Policy Council.

Krantz endorses all of these efforts to make families a top priority for American policy makers, but his agenda is slightly different than that of other pro-family proponents: instead of focusing so rigidly on the family structure, he would rather America put more emphasis on childrenÑperiod.

" A number of groups believe we can, and should, turn the clock back to the nuclear family, but I believe the nuclear family was a myth to begin with," Krantz says. " Sure, you had mom and dad at home, together, but I'm not so sure that was always very good for the children."

One of those groups looking for a return to a more traditional family structure is the Council on Families in America, a research and public-policy organization whose membership includes Galston, Clinton's family advisor. The council represents a broad political spectrum, but it is steadfast in its position that a return to the traditional two-parent family is the cure to much of America's problems.

" It is absolutely the key to our future," says Dr. David Popenoe, a Rutgers sociologist who founded and now co-chairs the Council. " Even if you pour all the money in the world into programs for single-parent families, there is no indication they will ever make it as well as a two-parent family."

Krantz, however, says there also is no indication that a two-parent family can be successful in raising children if those parents are not committed to their children.

" Two parents? Why not three?" asks Krantz. " Two is what we grew up with and is thought of as the ideal, but that may have been 30 years ago. It's just not that way anymore. I don't think the pendulum will ever swing back, or even if it should. We have to deal with what we have now. And what we have is a lot of single-parent families that can be very successful with raising children."

Popenoe says it is true that two people do not automatically become good parents by simply being married and living together, but he adds that Krantz is flirting with a Utopian dreamland by suggesting one parent can be as successful as two. "

Sure, I'd agree that the child only needs one parent if that parent is absolutely devoted and has the skills and financial security to make that kind of commitment," Popenoe says. " But that's unrealistic and Dr. Krantz should be more cautious about making that kind of statement. He should know that their chances are not nearly as great if that parent has a spouse of the opposite sex."

The push for the two-parent nuclear family has brought Popenoe and other pro-family organizations under attack as being antifeminist or anti- homosexual. While Krantz does not endorse the concept of homosexuals raising children, he also doesn't condemn it.

As a researcher, he says he is reluctant to make any statement since there have been no extensive studies of homosexual families. But he admits to having the same kind of reservations about it as he would about kids being raised by parents of mixed race. " Raising children in that kind of environment is not necessarily bad, but it does complicate a child's life and I believe raising children is hard enough without adding that additional complication," he says.

However, he says the quality of care is the main issue. " Making a commitment to your children is far more important than any other issue," he says. " If two people of the same sex can make that commitment, the child might be better off than in a traditional family where there is no commitment."

While the Council on Families in America and other groups are pushing for new policies to promote marriage counseling and revision of the tax code to give married couples with children more favorable treatment, Krantz is not very optimistic that these proposals will be approved any time soon.