• by Sarah Mahoney  @mahoney_sarah, August 10, 2010

If you're a tween, your mom is probably cooler than anyone else's mom. She's more likely to be on Facebook, listen to Top 40 radio, and read blogs than other adults, according to a new report the Retail Advertising and Marketing Association, a division of the National Retail Federation.

Tweens—kids aged 8 to 12—have emerged as something of It Market in the last few years, for everything from clothes to décor to laptops. "But we did this study because we didn't know much about their mothers," Mike Gatti, RAMA's executive director, tells Marketing Daily. "She's very busy, but compared to other adults, she's busy in different ways." While moms with preteens largely hold professional or managerial jobs, not unlike other adults, (37.5% vs. 30.9%) more moms with tweens label themselves as homemakers (13.9% vs. 4.7%) or clerical or service workers (16.1% vs. 9.8%) than the average adult over 18 years old. "And she is more progressive in knowing how to do much of this new-media stuff," he says.