LONDON, May 27 (Xinhua) -- Parents, especially mothers in Britain are paying heavy price for the COVID-19 lockdown, a study revealed Wednesday.

School closures, job losses and furloughing, and a shift to working from home are all affecting how parents spend their time and how mothers and fathers divide responsibilities for paid work, housework and childcare, according to the study by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) and University College London (UCL).

The researchers surveyed 3,500 families with two opposite-gender parents to look at how they are sharing paid work and domestic responsibilities.

The study revealed mothers are more likely than fathers to have left paid work since February, and among mothers and fathers who are still in paid work, mothers have seen a bigger proportional reduction in hours of work than fathers.

Among those doing paid work at home, mothers are also more likely than fathers to be spending their work hours simultaneously trying to care for children.

The survey also reveals the extent to which mothers have picked up the bulk of the time spent on new responsibilities for childcare and housework. They are looking after children during an average of 10.3 hours of the day (2.3 hours more than fathers), and are doing housework during 1.7 more hours than fathers.

Co-author, professor Almudena Sevilla at UCL's Institute of Education said: "Time use diaries reveal that mothers are taking the majority of additional childcare as a result from COVID-19, which is really disrupting. It is not surprising then that women are losing their jobs to a greater extent than men as a result from this crisis."

Alison Andrew, a senior research economist at the IFS, said there is risk that the lockdown leads to a further increase in the gender wage gap.

However, the study noted that fathers have also increased the time they spend on housework and childcare.

Fathers are, on average, now doing childcare during lockdown nearly twice as many hours as in 2014-15, according to the research.