The American brand HearthSong was found in 1983 by Barbara Kane, simply a mother that could not find proper toys for her children to buy, decided to create them and later turned this idea to the company that works till today. Since its early days toys that provide parents to engage with their children are in the focus of the HearthSong’s activity.

To celebrate its 25th anniversary, the brand conducted the survey in order to count minutes and hours that parents spent with their children.

The result was rather impressive. It was found that only 38% of parents being surveyed spend at least six hours per week in active play with their kids. For others this index is even less. According to HearthSong, the average time is fewer than 10 minutes per day.

Surprisingly, but 99% of parents with a child aged 12 and under believe that children's play is very important.

For example, 27% of parents think they help "learning to interact with others”, 18% believe they develop "motor skills”. Also right toys and games teach "problem solving" (17%), "creative thinking" (17%), "imagination" (12%) or a "sense of accomplishment" (9%).

The survey for HearthSong was conducted by IPSOS in July 17-21, 2008. For the survey, a national sample of 1 008 parents of a child aged 12 or under, randomly selected from IPSOS' U.S. online panel, were interviewed online. An estimated margin of error is +/-3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.