Parenting Under Pressure: A Mixed-Methods Investigation of the Impact of COVID-19 on Family Life

Background: Development and implementation of effective family-based intervention and treatment strategies during COVID-19, and future public health crises, will require a detailed understanding of the ways that COVID-19 has affected parents, children, and families. Qualitative and mixed-methods research is an important means of gaining such detailed information, particularly in the early phases of the pandemic, when the research community continues to explore the meaning of this experience. Methods: We employed thematic analysis to identify themes in parents’ and children’s reflective writing about COVID-19, and explored how citation of certain themes mapped onto quantitative measures of distress commonly used in past psychosocial research on pandemics. Data were collected from N = 56 parents and N = 43 children between April to May 2020. Findings: Analysis of parent and child written reports revealed positive and negative thematic content, though parents expressed more positive themes than children. The most common themes identified from parent reports surrounded concerns about the impact of COVID-19 on their children, health concerns for others, and the stressful balancing act of parenting, schooling, and working from home. In addition, many parents reported gratitude for what they had, and reflected on the upsides of the pandemic for family relations. For children, the most common themes identified surrounded missing school and social relationships. When children expressed positive themes, they tended to be more egocentric reflections (e.g. learning to ride a bike). Both parent and child thematic content mapped onto parent-proxy and parent-self reported quantitative dimensions of parent and child distress. Finally, we observed that parents who reflected on gratitude in their written reports exhibited a decrease in negative affect pre- to -post-writing.Interpretation: Both parents and children are suffering from reduced wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly with the burdens imposed by the closure of in-person schooling. The psychosocial impact of the pandemic on families would likely be even greater in magnitude within less advantaged populations. Future research and policy should focus on identifying how to fulfill children’s social needs and lessen the caregiving burdens during this time.