reading aloud

I was wondering if people still read aloud to their children? I only ask because I've just bought a couple of Young James Bond DVDs for my nephew - it's his 12th birthday soon, and I don't think his parents have read to him much, yet he still loves to listen to stories in bed and has lots of audiobooks. He doesn't have a TV or computer in his bedroom and I know his parents have absolutely and firmly resolved to hold out as long as possible on this, a stance with which I totally agree. My sons had a TV in their bedroom when they were about 15-16 and my daughter never had one at all and there's something pitiful, I think, about children holed up in their bedrooms, away from adult life, with their TV's, DVD players and computers.
Anyway, back to reading aloud. I derived enormous pleasure from reading to my children, and discovered and rediscovered many, many books. They were incredibly lucky, as the 1970s were in many ways the golden age of children's literature. TV didn't compete in the way it does now, with multi-channel, 24-hour programmes on tap, there were no computer games or videos/DVDs. We read to them every night, either individually or to all of them at once, which meant that my youngest son got to hear Lord of the Rings at the impressionable, and possibly inappropriate age of about 7 and developed a deep and abiding love of the books, and, many years later, the films. I still have many of the books and am sad that bedtime stories now seems to be a dying practice. I've seen articles in the paper about reading to children but I imagine that parents who've been at work all day are simply too tired. I feel immensely privileged to have been a mother when most mothers of young children didn't need to work - nowadays it's a necessity in order to have even a half-decent income and pay the mortgage and bills.
My life would have been immeasurably the poorer for not having had that time every evening with them. And of course there were the books. I know the Frog and Toad books, Bread and Jam for Frances and Each Peach Pear Plum, off by heart, having read them in turn 4 times over. I feel sorry, not only for the children, but for today's parents today who haven't had such richness in their lives; still, I always promised myself that I wouldn't bang on about 'the good old days' when I became old and grey, and the 1970s had its disadvantages. It certainly wasn't all bad, though - great TV, great children's books, great films and some great music.