Dads doing more house work: study
Updated on 14 June 2009
The value of work fathers do around the house has nearly doubled during the past four years as men take on more domestic chores, research has shown.
It would cost an estimated £23,296 to pay someone to do all the jobs fathers do for free, up from £12,738 in 2005, according to insurer Legal & General.
Men now spend an average of 53 hours a week carrying out household chores and childcare, up from just 34 hours a week in 2005.
Within this total, they spend around 21.5 hours looking after children, 9.5 hours doing housekeeping tasks, 7.5 hours cleaning and six hours cooking.
By contrast, fathers have only seven hours a week leisure time to use as they choose, and they spend only around three hours a week with their partner.
But fathers appear not to mind the increasing level of domestic tasks they are taking on, with 46% of fathers claiming they would prefer not to work and stay at home and look after the children instead.
Alan Ferguson, protection marketing and channel development director at L&G, said: "Mums often get the headlines when it comes to domestic work, but actually dads contribute a huge amount, too. These days, the jobs involved in running a house are far more evenly distributed."
But despite the high value of jobs carried out by fathers only 63% have life insurance, while just a third have critical illness cover and 27% have income protection.
Instead, 35% of families said they would rely on grandparents to step in and help out with the work done by fathers if they died or were too ill to do it, while 30% said they would work part-time, despite the fact this would have a significant impact on the amount of money they had coming in.
Bdifferent questioned 1,000 parents during January.
These news feeds are provided by an independent third party and Channel 4 is not responsible or liable to you for the same.
