Despite 'Mommy Guilt,' Time With Kids Increasing

In all, the research, published in the fall, tells a complex story of family trade-offs and cultural shifts -- over a span of years when U.S. mothers entered the workforce as never before and the number of families headed by single mothers jumped markedly. This was also a time when families had fewer children and parents were more educated.

"There is a greater stake in each child succeeding," Milkie said.

Now, said Sharon Hays, of the University of Southern California, women -- especially those in the middle and upper-middle class -- feel that to be good mothers they need to be experts on child development and spend more and more time interacting with their children. Hays, who wrote a book on the subject, calls this "the culture of intensive mothering."

But the world that families live in has changed, too. There has been an explosion of lessons and athletic teams for children as young as 3 years old. There are also more concerns about safety and crime, which affect how close parents stay to their children.

Mothers say pressures have been ratcheted up -- which is why, in the Virginia suburbs one recent night, Cynthie Bush and a friend, both teachers with small children, made the effort to get out to a PTA lecture that would touch on the topic.

As her friend, Melissa Waltman of Loudoun County, put it: "You want to be a good mother, but what is that? You're trying to meet these expectations that society has defined."

Changing Priorities

Lori Manik has her own theory about how women today manage to get in more hours of focused child care even though they do more paid work. "If you only have two hours with your kids, then maybe you make sure it's quality time," she said.

"Instead of going home and cleaning the house and doing laundry, they go home and spend time with their kids."

Manik is a stay-at-home mom with four children -- in basketball, soccer, baseball, piano, violin, Scouting, religious education, German -- and a busy life as PTA president at Oak Hill Elementary School.

Looking back to her mother's generation, she sees differences, starting with her mother's newspaper ritual. Her mother would sit at the kitchen table and read for what seemed like a couple of hours. If Manik or her siblings interrupted, they were told to be quiet. In today's busier, more child-centered times, Manik said: "I read after my kids go to bed."

In a 2005 poll by The Washington Post, 74 percent of mothers nationally said motherhood was more demanding than it had been for the previous generation.

Now 45, Manik recalls that these changes were clear even a decade ago when she signed up her 4-year-old for ballet and soccer. At 5, her daughter started piano. "I remember my mother saying, 'Why are you doing all of this?' "