Take That's chart-topping hit single Patience has topped a poll to find the most popular modern songs sung to babies by their mothers.

A survey of 2,000 parents conducted by The Baby Website found that two thirds of parents now believe that pop songs are more effective at lulling their babies to sleep than traditional lullabies.

More than one in ten parents say that classics like Rock-A-Bye Baby are outdated, while many cannot remember the words to old-fashioned songs.

Robbie Williams' hit Angels emerged as the second most popular song for mums to sing to their babies, followed somewhat surprisingly by Katy Perry's I Kissed A Girl, James Blunt's You're Beautiful and Elvis Presley's Love Me Tender.

Kathryn Crawford of The Baby Website said: "We were really surprised to find that mums would rather sing modern pop tunes than traditional lullabies.

"I expect most mums put the radio on when at home with baby in the daytime, and many of the catchy lyrics in today's charts make it impossible to sing anything else at bedtime."