New ''super-parents'' give more time to kids

LONDON, Oct 5 (Reuters) Britain has a new generation of super-parents who are ''professionalising'' their role and running their families like a business, a study has said.

The Changing Face of Parenting report yesterday said that contrary to the widespread perception that modern parents are too busy to spend time with their offspring, many now spend more time engaged in childcare than parents did 30 years ago.

''The general sense that parents are increasingly time-pressed and do not spend sufficient time with their children has been proven false,'' the report said.

It found that modern parents spent an average of 99 minutes a day with their children, compared with 25 minutes in 1975.

While in the 1970s it was more likely a mother would be looking after her children during the day rather than working, she would also be spending more of that time on cleaning, shopping and other household chores.

With modern technology helping to reduce the amount of time spent on domestic tasks, parents are organising work, home life and childcare in a more business-like way so that they have time to spend with their children.

The report, based on research among 800 adults, found that as part of this new approach, today's parents were having fewer children and having them later in life than any previous generation.

It also found that having children was now viewed as a ''lifestyle choice'' rather than an inevitable life stage.

''Parents and potential parents are now taking a highly professionalised and demanding approach to raising children,'' said Paul Flatters, chief Executive of the Future Foundation think-tank which produced the report.

''It is therefore not surprising that they are delaying or rejecting the parenting role until it suits their lifestyle, financial situation and anxiety needs.'' The report provides a sharp contrast to recent views expressed by child experts and church leaders who warned last month that children were being poisoned by a ''junk culture'' of computer games, television and processed food.

The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury said in September that mental illness rates were increasing among young children because they were growing up in a climate of fear and were starved of love and affection by the their parents.

REUTERS BDP RAI0827