A survey from Nationwide Building Society has revealed that one in six people estimate that Dads save their families around £500 per month thanks to the work they do for free around the home with DIY topping the list of dads’ duties.

Almost a third of fathers spend over eight hours a week doing a variety of household chores says the report.

The survey revealed that:

• 68% of Dads do DIY.
• 57% of Dads do gardening.
• 48% of Dads fix the car.
• 47% of Dads maintain the household electrics.
• 44% of Dads act as a ‘taxi service’ for family members.
• 41% of Dads do the plumbing.

Yet despite their highly valuable contribution, the survey showed that a quarter of all fathers do not have life insurance, meaning that they could leave their family with the high costs of replacing this domestic labour, as well as dealing with considerable grief and the loss of a salary.

In addition to spending time undertaking traditional male tasks, such as plumbing and electrical chores, the survey also revealed that men are carrying out ‘unpaid work’ in the areas of cleaning (30%), cookery (37%) and childcare (18%).

In fact, one in five households said that Dad does more work around the house than Mum. While a mother’s work within the family is well documented, the research revealed that 70% of those surveyed believe that society under-values Dad’s contribution to the household.

Steve Clode, divisional director, marketing said:

"All those odd jobs Fathers do around the house really add up – think how much it would cost to call a plumber out every time the tap springs a leak or how much a taxi would charge for all those lifts home late at night.”

“With this in mind, why not use this Father’s Day as an opportunity to say ‘thank you’ and show your appreciation.”

"On a more serious note, our survey showed that one in four fathers do not have any life insurance. As a Dad, we naturally want to take care of our loved ones, so we need to think about how they would cope if we weren’t around. And it needn’t cost a fortune, for the price of just a couple of pints of beer a month, Dads can have peace of mind knowing that if anything happened to him, the family would be taken care of financially."

Other Key Findings:

• Northern Ireland: 79% say that society recognises the mother’s role more than theirs - the highest rate in the country.
• West Country: 7% of fathers didn’t believe that it was important for Dads to be involved in family life - the lowest rate in the country.
• Yorkshire: 17% of families in Yorkshire thought that their fathers’ chores would cost more than £1,000 if they had to pay someone else to do these jobs – the highest rate in the country.
• Wales: Families here rated their fathers efforts as pretty cheap when it came to household chores with 10% thinking that it would only cost up to £50 a month for someone else to do the same job.
• London: Dads here were the least likely to take out life insurance with 59% admitting to not having this cover.
• Anglia: The division of labour here was the most balanced in the country with almost 50% of families saying that their parents split household chores equally.
• Scotland: 49% of Scottish men contribute to the household cooking – the highest rate in the UK.
• Tyne Tees: Fathers in this region score the lowest at being able to fix the car with only 33% being handy with a spanner. When it comes to childcare, men in this region also struggle with only 13% taking responsibility for looking after the kids.
• Women had the hardest time in Northern Ireland and the North East with the lion’s share of family chores being left to the lady of the house.