Parents Struggle To Keep Children's Hands Clean

More than half of parents admit it's a constant battle to get their children to wash their hands.

Mums and dads of 3 to 17 year olds say their biggest struggle is before eating (27%), after using the toilet (25%) and even when returning home from school (23%). The recent research surveyed 2,000 mums and dads in December 2021. It has shown that during a typical day parents wash their hands 8 times a day, whereas their children just 6 times.

However, more than a fifth of kids, only wash their hands 3 times or fewer, resulting in a quarter of the parents questioned, if they taught their children how to wash their hands properly. An interior swab of items including the kitchen sink taps, banisters and doorknobs found many different varied types of bacteria, ranging from normal, harmless skin bacteria to those we would normally expect to find in our gut.

Worryingly, a third of parents have found it's been even harder to get kids to maintain good hand hygiene since the start of the pandemic, with 6 in 10 parents concerned about their children bringing an illness into their house. In a normal busy day at home, parents predict the time of the day their child touches the most surfaces to be just after lunchtime at 1pm.

And to add to the family chaos, as many as 3 in 10 parents struggle to get their children to brush their teeth, while 24% said washing their child's hair is also a constant battle.