The results have both positive and negative connotations, says Ian Pierpoint, a senior vice president for the company. Some parents felt their own parents didn't understand them, and they see a best friend as someone who is fun to be around, listens and is not judgmental, he says.

But unlike a traditional parent, a best-friend parent "doesn't give you rules and tell you what to do," Pierpoint says.

He spent time with 45 families and says some of the parents didn't insist that their teens do such tasks as homework or household chores.

"One mother wouldn't make her child do homework because it would make him unhappy. This is the extreme side of best-friend parenting," Pierpoint says. "The majority of best-friend parents are just not setting guidelines and rules."

The findings indicate that children don't have to pester their parents much to persuade them to buy them things. Pester power is being replaced by "guess-ter" power, he says.

Experts have different views on this parenting style. Psychologist Frank Farley of Temple University in Philadelphia says being a best friend to your child doesn't necessarily mean you've abdicated your parental role; it just means you've changed it and are talking and reasoning things through instead of simply laying down the law.

"A parental best friend is going to be a shoulder to cry on," he says. "It's a best friend who is wise, reasonable, understanding and knowledgeable."

Farley has done research that shows kids in this age range often consider their parents their No. 1 heroes. This survey makes it look as if this "family bonding is a two-way street," says Farley, former president of the American Psychological Association.

Others aren't convinced this style is the way to go. Though being a friend and someone teens and young adults can look up to is good, being a best friend is being too enmeshed in their lives, says Carol Freeman, a school psychologist and author of "A Parent's Guide to Surviving High School." "Part of parenting is letting go."

Sampson Lee Blair, associate professor of sociology at the State University of New York-Buffalo, says that years ago parents saw their children as financial assets who were needed to help run the farm, but parents today view their kids as "emotional assets, the objects of their love and affection."

Many parents are working longer hours, so they want "quality time" with their children to be friendly and unconfrontational, he says.

Some parents even share their personal and work-related problems with their children because they don't live near their own parents, siblings or other relatives. This isn't always appropriate because the child may be too young to hear these details, Blair says.

He believes many parents would like to get their children everything they want in order to "buy their affection," but "trying to play to every little whim or desire will create problems for the child later in life."

If children have every need and desire met, they are going to have a letdown in adulthood, he says.

The Synovate findings show that kids today aren't necessarily going to follow in their parents' footsteps when it comes to parenting, Pierpoint says.

Only 28 percent of the teens and young adults say they intend to be a best friend to their children. Only 10 percent of teens say they intend to buy their kids everything.

Some of the twentysomethings he interviewed had never paid their own bills or bought their own personal items such as deodorant or toothpaste. One young man didn't know how to make coffee.

"We call them 'adult-escents.' They are 25 years old but have the life skills of a teenager," Pierpoint says.

Many parents are creating homes where the adult children want to stay, he says. "No bills. No rent. Very little in the way of chores. And the parents fill the house with things like PlayStations, pool tables ... "