WOMEN’S lib’ might have thrown open the era of working mothers, but that has not led to their spouses contributing more towards bringing up the children, a new study has found.

Often male parents find excuses, claiming excess involvement in their establishments, forcing working mothers to send their children to tuition centres and creches, said the findings by a survey conducted under the aegis of Assocham Social Development Foundation (ASDF) on the “Plight of Modern Father towards their children”.

The study was conducted on more than 4,700 working parents in metros and adjoining cities. The places surveyed included all metros and cities

like Lucknow, Chandigarh, Pune, Bangalore, Ahmadabad, Udaipur, Shimla, Dehradun,

Indore, Patna, Cochin and Chennai. The survey further revealed that only a meagre four per cent working fathers admitted that they squeeze out time to supervise and monitor their children’s homeworks after winding up their daily office routine which also includes commuting time.

The remaining 96 per cent fathers blamed current jobs for not having been able to take care of their wards. As a result the burden falls on their spouses who with great difficulties cope up with home and office pressure including demands from children. The resulting journey to coaching centres and creches were causing a dent in the budgets of such families, the study said.

Out of 96 per cent of working fathers, only seven per cent indicated that they help their children occasionally. Just 24 per cent of respondents said they help only if their children ask while a majority 65 per cent said that they never help with their children’s homework.

On the other hand, 65 per cent working mothers are more likely than male respondents to help their children with homeworks every day. Around two in five parents (59 per cent) indicated that they are not confident helping their child with homework because of “different teaching methods these days” and also because they “don’t understand the work their child does” (21 per cent).

Another reason is that the respondent “wasn’t taught certain subjects at school” (10 per cent). Working mothers are most likely to do school projects with their children (83 per cent) with slightly fewer respondents indicating that they play sport (20 per cent), make things (79 per cent) or read with their children (79 per cent).

Male parents are more likely than female parents to help with sports, while the opposite applied to cooking and drawing or painting.

However, the survey said that children living with single mother and single father are highly involved in their schools —46 per cent and 49 per cent respectively.

Seventy six per cent parents who work long or irregular hours are not available for children after school, especially to help with the homework and are not able to attend school functions or sports days and do things together at weekends, the survey says.