Survey: 43% of parents have done kids' homework

It's 9 p.m. and the homework is not done. Your 9-year-old is in tears, with 16 math problems left. You sigh, brush aside the second thoughts and just do the problems yourself.

Your fourth-grader has been assigned to build a model of a California mission. When you help carry the finished product to school, some of the models look to have been built by architects. Suspicious about who actually made them?

Whose homework is it anyway?

Forty-three percent of parents queried in a survey this month admit to doing their children's homework at least once to ease the strain. Almost half the dads, 47%, owned up to doing the homework, while 39% of mothers did so.

Kids who hope to persuade (con?) parents into doing homework have a better shot if mom and dad are older. Of parents 18-24, 33% say they’ve done their children’s homework for them, compared with 45% of 25- to 44-year-old parents.

The survey of 778 parents, conducted for the homework resource website Ask Kids, showed that 84% of parents help with homework -- more with math and English than with other subjects.

The survey was conducted by Kelton Research using an e-mail invitation and an online survey. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

-- Mary MacVean

Comments

[Angela Norton Tyler]

I wouldn't be surprised if more parents did their children's homework. I speak to frazzled parents all the time about how their kids simply cannot keep up with the amount of homework they are given. What disturbs me is that pre-school and kindergarten students are now expected to do homework!
Parents must refuse to accept this madness. But, until they do, back to school is a great time to completely revamp their family's "homework situation":

http://www.family-homework-answers.com/back-to-school.html