The Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Family Wellbeing and Child Behaviors

• In Event: Household Functioning and Child Wellbeing in the Midst of COVID-19: Evidence from Across the United States

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped daily life for children and families (Yoshikawa et al., 2020). In many places, widespread school closures have left families to singlehandedly take on educating and caring for their young children, all the while other responsibilities continue and the pandemic rages on. The media and a growing body of research have documented heightened stress levels and increased mental health challenges facing many families in this precarious arrangement (e.g., Brown et al., 2020; Cuartas, 2020; Griffith, 2020). Yet, as most existing empirical work relies on cross-sectional data collected in the post-pandemic period, it is unclear how much the pandemic has actually affected family and child wellbeing. In the present study, we leverage longitudinal data from a statewide study of children’s development to quantify the impacts of the pandemic on family wellbeing and children’s behaviors. We also consider whether changes in family-level outcomes explain pandemic-induced differences in children’s behaviors. Finally, we explore whether the consequences of the pandemic varied among children and families from different socioeconomic backgrounds.

Information for 1,206 families participating in a large statewide study in Massachusetts was collected in three waves between May 2018 and June 2020. Table 1 illustrates the sociodemographic diversity of children in this sample. In each of the three waves, parents provided information via online survey on their mental health, levels of stress, household chaos, and parent-child relationship quality. They also rated their children’s externalizing, internalizing, adaptive, and dysregulated behaviors. All measures are widely used survey instruments and have adequate psychometric properties in the analytic sample.

Our analyses exploit the fact that some of the surveys in the third wave were completed after the start of a Stay-at-Home Advisory in Massachusetts on March 24, 2020 (25%; n = 305) and some were completed before this point (75%; n = 901). To estimate the average consequences of the shutdown, which represented a crucial turning point in the pandemic, we use a child fixed effects approach to make within-child comparisons between child and family outcomes in the aftermath of the state shutdown as compared to those from prior years. Using fixed effects accounts for all time-invariant child, family, and other contextual factors that might predict pre- and post-pandemic outcomes, as well as the timing of parent survey completion in the third wave, offsetting concerns about selection bias. Table 2 illustrates the pandemic’s main impacts using this methodological approach. Parental mental health challenges, parental stress, and household chaos all increased due to the pandemic, while parent-child relationship quality decreased. In terms of children’s behaviors, externalizing, internalizing, and dysregulated behaviors increased, while adaptive behaviors decreased.

These preliminary results make clear the pandemic’s blow to family and child wellbeing. The presentation will include complete analyses that (1) use fixed effects models to examine whether changes in family wellbeing coincide with changes in child behaviors and (2) estimate the models within specific subgroups in our data. We will discuss how these results can inform efforts to support families and children in this unprecedented moment.

Authors

• Emily Hanno, MDRC (Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation) - New York City
  Presenting Author

• Jorge Cuartas, Harvard University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Stephanie M Jones, Harvard Graduate School of Education
  Non-Presenting Author

• Nonie Lesaux, Harvard Graduate School of Education
  Non-Presenting Author