At a birthday party a few weeks ago, a friend who works like a dog on Wall Street confessed to me that on a recent Sunday she had let her two boys, 5 and 7, watch television from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. For four hours uninterrupted, the boys watched “Power Rangers,” “Beyblade,” and “Yu-Gi-Oh!”

“They must have been thrilled,” I laughed, as she went on to recount the miserable week she had had at work. Another mother in our class, we now surmise, was not so thrilled – she no longer allows her son to play at my friend’s house.

Is television really the enemy we make it out to be, though?

Don’t get me wrong. Just a brief look at the statistics regarding television and children is enough to make you want to throw the darn thing out the window.

According to the National Institute on Media and the Family, one in five children’s programs have little or no educational value. Forty-four percent of children and teens report watching different programs when their parents are not around. And if that’s not bad enough, the American Psychiatric Association reports that the typical American child watches 28 hours of television a week, and by the age of 18 will have seen 16,000 simulated murders and 200,000 acts of violence.

The University of Michigan Health System reports on its Web site that children see 1,000-2,000 television advertisements for alcohol each year. The university also cites a 17-year study that found that teenage boys who grew up watching more than an hour of television a day were four times more likely to commit acts of violence than those who watched less than an hour a day.

The statistics are undeniably alarming. But at the same time, I am reminded of the statistics regarding fetal alcohol syndrome. When I was pregnant with my first child, I reasoned that when it came to alcohol, no safe amount meant no safe amount. Despite the fact that as I neared the end of my pregnancy more seasoned mothers told me that I could have a drink, I didn’t indulge.

But during my second pregnancy, I was overseas for an extended period and had my 20-week scan performed by an internationally regarded doctor. When I asked her if I could have an occasional drink, she answered dryly, “Well, it’s all in there, isn’t it?” The alarms being sounded by those aware of the dangers of fetal alcohol syndrome weren’t meant for a little goody two shoes like me who wanted a glass of wine with dinner during her final trimester.

And so it goes with television. I was raised in a home where television was frowned on. I can still hear my father’s voice booming about how there was always a book worth reading and that television was a waste of time. It is a message I often find myself repeating to my kids.

And so it’s no surprise that my husband and I strictly limit how much television our children are allowed to watch. He was raised in a television free home, but that had nothing to do with any parenting beliefs. Television didn’t make it to his native country, South Africa, until 1975, when he was already 13 years old. When years ago he introduced me to his college friend, Greg Brady, I wondered aloud how he had fared in high school with such a name. Neither man had even heard of “The Brady Bunch,” let alone seen the episode in which Marsha and Greg compete to see who is the better driver.

But let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. At 6 a.m. on a Sunday, when your 4-year-old wakes up, amen for the television. It’s 7 p.m. and you have a splitting headache and are the only adult around? Turn that machine on. And when you are struggling to get your youngest child to sleep and your older two are ready to kill each other? Say a special prayer for Philo T. Farnsworth and Vladimir Zworykin, the inventors of television.

Almost every family I know in New York has some sort of limit set on the television-viewing in their home. Very few children I know are allowed to have televisions in their bedrooms. Some parents control what their children watch by insisting that only videos are played, as opposed to cartoon networks. Many parents even often plop down with their children and watch television with them.

The television is the cheapest babysitter I know. It never gets sick and it never has a date. For sure, there need to be strict limits. But when you walk out the door Saturday evening and don’t feel like hearing any moaning, amen for “Animal Planet.”