Learn Hardcore Russian: Моя дочь любит самостоятельно делать уроки без моей помощи. - My daughter likes to do her homework independently, without my help.

Кто любит? – моя дочь. (Who likes it? – my daughter.)
Subjects in Russian normally appear in the nominative, so we use моя (nom. fem. sg.) + дочь (nom. fem. sg.).

Мою дочь is the accusative form and would be used if my daughter were the object, e.g.:

Я люблю мою дочь. – I love my daughter.
(Here I am the subject, my daughter is the object.)

In your sentence, my daughter is doing the liking, so nominative моя дочь is correct.

Why is it любит делать, not любит сделать?

Russian uses любить + imperfective infinitive to talk about general likes, habits, preferences.

любить делать (что-то) = to like doing something (in general, habitually).

The verb делать is imperfective, which is the default form for:

repeated actions
general statements
activities you enjoy as an ongoing thing

Сделать is perfective and usually focuses on one complete result:

Любит сделать is almost never used; it sounds wrong or at least very odd in this meaning.

So:

Моя дочь любит делать уроки... = My daughter likes doing homework (in general, as a routine).

Why is there no separate word for “to” before делать?

Russian doesn’t use a separate word for “to” with infinitives.
The infinitive form of the verb itself corresponds to “to do / to make / to go,” etc.

делать = to do / to make (here: to do homework)
любить делать = to like to do

So where English has:

likes to do homework

Russian simply has:

любит делать уроки

No preposition or particle like “to” is needed. The infinitive form (делать) already encodes that idea.

Why is уроки plural? In English we often say “homework” in the singular.

In Russian, the common phrase for “to do homework” is делать уроки – literally “to do lessons” in plural.

Some points:

урок = lesson (as a class, or a unit in a textbook)
уроки = lessons

In Russian school context, делать уроки has become a set phrase meaning:

“to do one’s homework” (all the exercises/assignments for different classes).

So:

делать уроки = to do homework (general school assignments)
It’s plural because you’re typically doing many tasks for several subjects.

You can also say:

делать домашнее задание – to do homework / the assignment
But делать уроки is very common and natural in everyday speech.

Why is уроки in that form and not уроков?

Уроки here is accusative plural of урок.

The object of делать (“to do”) must be in the accusative case:

Что делать? – делать уроки. (What to do? – do homework/lessons.)

The declension is:

Nom. pl.: уроки
Acc. pl.: уроки (same form for inanimate nouns)
Gen. pl.: уроков

We need the direct object form (accusative), not the genitive:

Correct: делать уроки
Incorrect here: делать уроков

Уроков would be used in contexts like:

много уроков – a lot of lessons
нет уроков – there are no lessons / no homework

What is the difference between самостоятельно and сама here?

Both relate to doing something on one’s own, but they are used a bit differently:

сама – short form of сам (masc) / сама (fem) / само, сами
- It agrees with the subject in gender and number.
- It can mean:
  - “by herself” / “without help”
  - or “herself” in the sense of emphasizing who does it.
Example:
- Моя дочь любит делать уроки сама.
  = My daughter likes to do her homework by herself.
самостоятельно – an adverb: “independently,” “on her own,” often a bit more formal or neutral.
- Focuses more on the manner: independently, without assistance.
- It doesn’t change for gender/number.
Example:
- Моя дочь любит самостоятельно делать уроки.
  = My daughter likes to do her homework independently.

In your sentence, самостоятельно sounds slightly more formal/neutral; сама would sound a bit more colloquial and personal, but both are correct and common.

Can самостоятельно be placed in other positions in the sentence?

Yes. Russian word order is relatively flexible, especially with adverbs like самостоятельно.
All of these are grammatically correct, but differ slightly in emphasis:

Моя дочь любит самостоятельно делать уроки без моей помощи.
(neutral: she likes independently doing homework)
Моя дочь любит делать уроки самостоятельно без моей помощи.
(a bit more emphasis on doing homework independently)
Моя дочь самостоятельно любит делать уроки без моей помощи.
(sounds less natural; suggests the liking itself is independent – usually avoided)

The most natural positions are:

before the infinitive: любит самостоятельно делать
or after the object: делать уроки самостоятельно.

Why is it без моей помощи and not без моя помощь?

Two important rules:

Без always takes the genitive case.
- без кого? чего? – without whom? without what?
- So we need помощи (genitive singular of помощь), not помощь (nominative).
The possessive pronoun must agree with the noun in gender, number, and case.
- помощь is feminine, singular, genitive → моей помощи.

Compare:

Nominative: моя помощь – my help (as a subject)
Genitive (after без): без моей помощи – without my help

So:

без моей помощи = without my help
без моя помощь is grammatically incorrect.

Why is it моей помощи, not моей помощь in без моей помощи?

This is about case:

The noun помощь (help) changes its ending in the genitive:
- Nominative: помощь
- Genitive: помощи

Because без requires the genitive, we must use:

помощи, not помощь.

The adjective/possessive pronoun also takes genitive feminine singular:

Nominative: моя помощь
Genitive: моей помощи

So the whole phrase becomes:

без моей помощи – without my help.

Why is it любит, not любить or люблю?

Любит is the correctly conjugated form of любить for 3rd person singular (“he/she/it likes”).

Conjugation of любить (to love, to like) in the present tense:

я люблю – I like
ты любишь – you (sg.) like
он / она / оно любит – he / she / it likes
мы любим – we like
вы любите – you (pl./formal) like
они любят – they like

Subject: моя дочь → “she” → она → third person singular feminine → любит.

любить (infinitive) = “to like”; not conjugated, so it can’t be the main verb with a subject.
люблю would match я, not моя дочь.

Could I say Моя дочь делает уроки сама без моей помощи instead? What’s the difference in meaning?

Yes, you can, but the meaning changes slightly.

Моя дочь любит самостоятельно делать уроки без моей помощи.
- Focus: on her preference / habit:
- “My daughter likes to do her homework independently, without my help.”
- Emphasizes that this is something she enjoys or prefers.
Моя дочь делает уроки сама без моей помощи.
- Focus: on the fact of how she usually does homework:
- “My daughter does her homework by herself, without my help.”
- Neutral statement of practice; doesn’t explicitly say she likes it, only that she does it this way.

So:

With любит: statement about preferences.
With делает only: statement about how things actually happen.