The poll, conducted last Monday to Wednesday, also detected fissures in the mother-child relationship, with children seeing less and less of their mothers on a daily basis. Many of 1,245 respondents, grandmothers, mothers and children aged 12 to 24, said they wanted to say sorry to their mothers, mostly for making rude and abusive remarks to them, Abac Poll's Noppadol Kannika told a press conference yesterday.

One-third of the children aged between 12 and 15 said they felt uneasy about having to say "Thank you" and "Sorry" to their mothers in front of others, as did 20.6 per cent of those aged between 16 and 19 and 27.3 per cent of those aged between 20 and 24 years, Noppadol said.

Those who had met and spoken to their mothers on a daily basis in the past three months went down from last year's survey's 63.6 per cent to 46.4 per cent, while those who had not went up from last year's 8.1 per cent to 23.7 per cent, Noppadol said.

Over half of those polled said they had never exercised with their mothers, 46.1 per cent had never taken their mothers to movies, and 31.2 per cent had never travelled with their mothers.

Discipline was found to have become laxer: the taboo against lying was down from 67.6 per cent in the grandmothers' generation to 52.6 per cent in the children's generation, that against impolite remarks was down from 45.1 per cent to 24.8 per cent, and that against taking life was down from 60 per cent to 52.6 per cent.

Drinking was objected to by 55.9 per cent of the grandmothers and 49.8 per cent of the children while premarital sex was condemned by 58 per cent of grandmothers and 53.9 per cent of children.