Part of that is that when roaming the streets, you knew the people on your street and usually had an idea that people were home to be able to call you to let you know there was a problem. Being at work is different than being "around and available" at home. Didn't have to be spending time with them directly to be available.

When I was roaming at as kid it was to my other friends houses in my neighborhood and everywhere in between. I live in a fairly large neighborhood now and we only know one other boy in the neighborhood who is my son's age. It's unfortunate for him.

At the same time, my daughter has several friends in the neighborhood her age and they play together all the time either at our house or the house of another parent who works from home.

That said, when I was really little I watched a video of my 4 year old birthday party so many times I memorized it. My mom called it "the best babysitter." Even today I can play that video in my head.

I wonder what the results would be if they included grand-parents (and similar close relatives) in the count of time spent. Because parents are not the only close adults being able to provide a 'parental' role of supervision and care; and families have gotten more and more split along the years, with an always more isolated parent(s)-child(ren) nucleus.

Speaking of isolation, father's time may rise, mother's time may rise as well, and yet the time spent with parents may decrease too: think of the multiplication of single mothers (and to a lesser degree single fathers).

The content of that article makes a different claim than the headline. It's possible to spend time with a child without devoting time to child care, which is what the article specifically cites. This would be the case for family run farms, and up until very recently the majority of the world's population were farmers.