PARENTS CALL ROLE TOUGHER IN '90S THAN IN THE PAST

By Linda Matchan, Globe Staff

SUNDAY, June 4, 1995

Parents across Massachusetts believe by an overwhelming majority that raising children today is harder than it was for their own parents, and their biggest worry for their children today is violence.

Yet, asked to name what they consider the ''biggest single negative influence on your child,'' parents gave what might be a surprising response: Rather than violence, drugs, or peer pressure, the greatest number of parents -- 41 percent -- fingered ''TV.''

Despite feeling that parenting is harder than it used to be, the 400 parents surveyed consider the 1990s a better time for children, in some ways, than past decades. Most said they feel that the world offers their children more opportunities than it offered them, girls in particular. A majority of parents of all income and educational levels also said they believe that their children will do better than they have done in their own lifetime.

The poll, conducted by telephone in April for the Globe by KRC Communications Research, surveyed 400 parents of children 18 years old or younger, to gauge their concerns about parenting, community and balancing work with family.

On work and family, 72 percent of all parents said they were ''able to balance parenting and work'' to their satisfaction. The number was 67 percent among mothers working full-time outside the home.

Most parents said they feel they get enough time with their children. But questioned specifically about how much time they spend with their children, nearly one-quarter of the parents reported spending two hours or less with them on an average weekday. Among full-time workers, 10 percent of mothers reported spending that little time, 38 percent of fathers.

Parents were asked to name the area that would give them more support at work, or would make working ''more attractive'' to nonworking parents. As an indication, perhaps, of how little parents' concerns have changed over the last few years, respondents chose the same areas selected by parents in a 1991 Globe poll. The answers: ''flexible scheduling'' (29 percent); ''more opportunity to work at home'' (24 percent); and ''better or more affordable child care at or near work'' (12 percent).

Television surfaced repeatedly as the most serious negative influence on children today. In interviews, parents indicated they consider this medium so powerful and, often, so destructive that it is undermining their efforts to teach positive social values to their children.

''There is so much violence on TV,'' said Mark Viera of New Bedford, the father of three children aged 9, 5, and 3. ''I remember when the [1960 Alfred Hitchcock] movie ''Psycho'' came out and even though it didn't show an actual killing -- just blood in the shower -- people were so shocked by it. It was foreign to them. Now, children by the age of 7 have seen thousands of acts of violence on TV, and they've become numb.''

The fact that most parents believed concerns about crime and violence were not the ones their own parents had -- and the fact that they consider television today to be such a dangerous influence -- suggests that today's parents feel that they are negotiating challenges on their own, with no previous models to look to for guidance. Only four percent said they believed ''crime and violence'' was their own parents' greatest concern a generation ago.

Parents' answers to questions about community and neighborhood indicated that the notion of ''community'' is far from an extinct concept: Fully half of those surveyed said they have a ''strong connection'' to the neighborhood, community or the block on which they live. One-third said their ties to their community were ''weak'' and the remainder were in the middle.

There were many indications that parents are not feeling entirely pessimistic or overwhelmed today. For example: