From COVID to 2025: Modeling Enduring Chain of Hardship, Parental Distress and Child Emotional Distress

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Sunday 1:45 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Executive Function and Social-Emotional Development in Early Childhood

Abstract

This study examines whether the “hardship chain reaction” observed during COVID-19 – where material hardship leads to parental emotional distress, affecting children’s emotional well-being – continues in 2025. Using monthly data from 2020-2025 from a national sample of caregivers of children under age six, the study applies linear and logistic regression alongside bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks. Findings show that both material hardship and parental emotional distress significantly predicted child emotional distress. LSTM models demonstrated high accuracy across racial/ethnic and income groups, with minor exceptions. While distress has declined overall, hardship persists among Latinx and low-income families. Results highlight the utility of combining traditional and machine learning approaches in understanding at-risk families and guide equitable early childhood interventions.

Authors

• WooJung Kim, Stanford University

• Phil Fisher, Stanford University