Ellen Galinsky grew up in a family where the adults always asked the kids questions, and the kids were allowed to respond openly. So it's not surprising that when she grew up, she asked the children also.

Today, Galinsky is president of the Families and Work Institute in New York. She continues to inquire, study and write. Today, though, she has a more public audience. She and her colleagues study the changing work force, family and community.

She has written several books, including Ask the Children: What America's Children Really Think About Working Parents.

Ask the Children, released in 1999, took more than five years to write. Galinsky and other researchers interviewed more than 700 adults and 1,000 children, ages 8 to 18, from across the country to try to represent the diversity in American life.

The children were asked how their parents' work affects them and their relationship. Parents were asked the same things.

Basically, Galinsky found that children don't feel adversely affected by their parents' work unless the work adversely affects their parents.

"If the parents are working in horrific jobs, where they're at war with their boss and they don't get along with their co-workers and they have no say over how to make things better, then having two parents in jobs like that won't be very good for the kids," Galinsky explained.

The opposite also is true. "If your work life is good, you come home with more energy and you're in a better mood and then you have better interactions with your children. So work can be a positive," she said.

What kids need from parents is for parents "to be there for them," Galinsky found. While so-called quality time -- what she calls focused time -- is important, time spent just hanging around together is equally so.

"So many young people told me that they couldn't whip into a meaningful relationship with their parents right away, that they needed a warm-up time," she explained.

Galinsky also found that a majority of the kids interviewed were concerned about their parents' welfare.

"The most interesting thing I found out was that the largest portion of children wish that their parents were less stressed and less tired.

"Children are very tuned in to their parents' stress, even though most parents don't think they are.''

One thing that causes stress is work. Children can pick up on this stress even if parents don't openly talk about it.

"I think that parents have been a little bit on remote when it comes to talking about work," she said. "I think they think of it like the television being on, but as a background noise. They don't really notice that children are listening and watching."

And what kids hear sometimes worries them.

"If the parent seems upset or angry or depressed about something, the kids are wondering, 'Is it my fault? Did something happen at work? Is it really something that's scary?' '' she said.

Stressed-out parents affect children in other ways.

"Among the least positive assessments given by children to their parents were controlling their tempers when something the child did made the parent upset," Galinsky said. "I think parents could really learn to handle stress and anger in a more constructive way."

Parents also need to do a better job of communicating with their kids, Galinsky found. "Kids didn't give their parents very high marks for knowing what's really going on in their lives," she said, advising that parents "listen in a way that makes the child want to talk."

ASSISTANT EDITOR: Xixi Hohman, 14.

REPORTERS: Caitlin Callahan, 12; Ben Hohman, 12; Evan Phillips, 13; Tom Risk, 12; and Maria Srour, 12.