Parenting and Parental Well-being during the COVID-19 Pandemic

This study examines changes over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic in parenting and parental well-being as important indicators of family functioning. Based on the Family Stress Model, the current study tests the prediction that parents who experienced more stress and had less personal, couple, and social resources early in the pandemic were more likely to experience negative changes in their parenting and parental well-being at later stages. Latent class growth analysis was conducted using three waves of data during the first year of the pandemic (July 2020, October 2020, and February 2021) from a Dutch sample of 188 parents and their partners, with children living at home. Most groups showed stable parenting and parental well-being across the first year of the pandemic, but 13% to 16% of the parents showed moderate and increasing parenting problems and parent-child relationship problems. These families were characterized by higher stress levels and less personal resilience and dyadic coping, and to a smaller degree also less secure attachment and social support early in the pandemic. Early detection of families that risk increasing parenting problems may benefit family interventions and policy in the event of new disease outbreaks.