Kids are 'scarred' by soaps

Four out of five parents think TV soaps encourage the breakdown of families, a Government- backed study has found.

They worry about too many scenes of sex and violence, high levels of infidelity, heavy drinking and 'an overall feeling of negativity' to family life.

Concerns are justified and Britain's biggest soaps are no longer suitable for children, according to the National Family and Parenting Institute.

Fewer than one in ten of the families in EastEnders on BBC1 or Channel 4's now-doomed Brookside is made up of a mother and father with their own children.

Only one in five of the families in ITV1's Coronation Street lives in a traditional family unit.

But this does not reflect the real state of family life in Britain, where three-quarters of children are brought up by both birth parents, says the institute. It warns that watching soaps might lead to 'beliefs that family breakdown is inevitable and to a tendency to underestimate difficulties with single parenthood.'

The study will raise more concerns about the increasingly sensational content of soap operas as television stations fight for prime-time ratings.

Television executives cannot dismiss the institute as a moral watchdog with minority support - it was set up by the Home Office and has a reputation for ignoring rather than exaggerating the importance of marriage and traditional family life.

Evidence for the weight of unhappiness with soaps came from a panel of 100 parents chosen by the institute.

Almost 80 per cent said soaps fail to 'promote positive moral values' and 70 per cent said they do not handle divorce well.

More than 50 per cent said the shows do not deal well with conflict between parents and children. And 50 per cent said soaps should be shown after the 9pm watershed because they are not suitable for children.

But parents did accept that the primary purpose of such programmes is to entertain and about 50 per cent said they can show families how to help each other. But a majority condemned them either for showing extra-marital affairs as acceptable, for being too explicit, or for portraying characters without morals.

Family life always seems to be negative and unhappy and some parents complained that characters often turn to alcohol as a solution to their problems.

Brookside, which is to be taken off the air at the end of the year, was singled out by the institute for showing families ' predominantly in crisis mode'.

EastEnders was criticised for having a high level of conflict and violence.

The institute report said of EastEnders: 'Potential or actual violence was not avoided and infidelity featured highly.

'Anti-social behaviour was presented as affording social status among peers and police and prison services were shown to be ineffective.'

Only a third of the couples in EastEnders were married and a quarter in Coronation Street. There was 'a much higher number of separated and divorced people than the national average.'

Only 50 per cent of the families in Coronation Street were headed by couples and just 40 per cent of those in EastEnders, with many involving stepmothers or fathers.

The Archers radio soap was the only one to be close to reality - nine out of ten families in the rural saga are headed by couples.

The report said: 'The family structure most prevalent in society - currently about 75 per cent of families - did not feature highly in any of the television programmes.

'An inevitable outcome of this is that these programmes cannot be said to address the question of how the stresses of everyday life are dealt with in the average family.'

The failure of soaps to capture the reality of family life, together with high levels of violence, means they are 'less childfriendly than parents might desire pre-watershed.'