Mainstream Research:

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TAKE-OUT TIME. Another surprising statistic: Children are actually spending more time with their parents than they were 20 years ago, according to several studies. The enhanced participation of men in child-rearing is the biggest reason, besides the falling birth rate. One recent time diary study, conducted by Sandra L. Hofferth and John Sandberg at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research, found that despite a rapid increase in the number of dual-earner families, children under 13 with working parents were spending an average of four hours more a week with their mothers and almost six hours more a week with their fathers than they were in 1981. The increase, notes Purdue University's professor of family studies, Shelley M. MacDermid, stems in part from discomfort parents have in sending kids out to play unsupervised. In fact, the study found that children's time with mothers and fathers in two-parent families increased so much that it washed out any decrease of time due to the mother's outside employment.