Associations Between Employment Change and Parental Mental Health during the COVID-19 Pandemic

• In Event: Poster Session 09
  In Poster Session: PS 09 Topic - Solicited Content: COVID-19 Related

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic is a public health crisis that has been associated with widespread job loss and significant increases in Americans’ reported stress. These changes could potentially pose a threat to parents’ mental health, which may be reflected in their parenting. While there is not much research reported on COVID-19, there are historical occurrences that have mirrored the impact income and employment changes have on families’ wellbeing. Research on the Great Recession found that unemployment was linked to a decline in mental health, when controlling for prior mental health status (Goldsmith & Diette, 2012). The link between job loss and mental health has been widely explored. For example, Murphy and Athanasou (1999) found that job loss predicted a substantial increase in mental health distress. Unlike previous economic downturns, the COVID-19 pandemic creates additional challenges with attaining new employment, such as health and safety issues, as well as increased child care responsibilities for parents of young children. The current study examines how employment changes are associated with parents’ rates of depression and anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic.

As shown in Table 1, the study comprised a socioeconomically-diverse sample of 207 parents with children in early elementary school. Approximately a fourth of families are classified as low-income families. Parents reported on employment changes and mental health, from March to July 2020. Approximately 11% of parents reported a reduction in work hours and another 11% of parents reported that they lost their job. Parents’ depressive symptoms were assessed by using The Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (Radloff, 1977) and anxiety symptoms were assessed by the PROMIS Emotional Distress-Anxiety Short Form (Polkonis et al., 2011). On average, parents reported clinically relevant levels of both depression and anxiety, demonstrating that a large percentage of the sample suffered from significant mental health symptoms.

Regression analyses were conducted in Stata 15 and all models included parent gender, parent racial minority status, and household income. As shown in Table 2, initial analyses demonstrated that parents who had a reduction in working hours, but not job loss, reported significantly higher rates of depressive symptoms and higher rates of anxiety symptoms on a trend-level.

The findings are consistent with previous studies showing that parents who suffered from employment changes reported substantial increases in mental health problems (Murphy & Athanasou, 1999). In our study, reductions in hours is linked to higher rates of mental health symptoms, whereas job loss is not. This could be due to the added stress to finding other jobs during the pandemic to cope with a reduction in hours. Parents have to worry about their financial situations and their own physical health, as well as the health of their families. These findings are policy-relevant and highlight the importance of supporting parents who are underemployed and have had reduced hours. Next steps include examining how employment changes and mental health are linked to parenting behaviors. We will also explore how employment changes for the participants’ spouse are linked to mental health changes and parenting behaviors.

Authors

• Vivian Nguyen, University of Nebraska - Lincoln
  Presenting Author

• Kimia Akhavein, University of Nebraska - Lincoln
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jenna Elizabeth Finch, University of Nebraska - Lincoln
  Non-Presenting Author