Families' Stress and Coping Strategies During Covid-19 Lockdown

• In Event: Poster Session 07
  In Poster Session: PS 07 Topic - Solicited Content: COVID-19 Related

Abstract

The novel coronavirus (Sars-CoV-2) altered people’s lives across the globe substantially. During the first half of the year, various governments limited the coronavirus’s spread by lockdowns, including physical distancing, home confinement, and closure of educational facilities and businesses. Lockdown measures particularly impacted families as parents had to manage their situation and the care for their children in parallel. Here, we investigated the sources of variation in families’ stress during the initial lockdown phase, i.e., we wanted to detect correlates that potentially function as risk or protective factors to families’ stress during lockdowns. Therefore, we conducted an online survey with N = 422 parents of 3- to 10-year-old children from 13 countries between April and June 2020, assessing diverse information about parents’ situation during the lockdown. Amongst others, parents reported information about their accommodation, family constellation, education, community size, children’s playtime, digital contact with peers, media consumption, and physical activity. Parents also reported cultural values about openness to change, self-transcendence, self-enhancement, and conservation. Finally, parents indicated their own and their children’s stress levels. Results suggest substantial variation in families’ stress levels and reactions to the lockdown. Commonly, children’s media consumption increased as compared to the time before the lockdown. Explorative inferential models revealed that parents raising both preschool-aged and school-aged children faced a particular risk of psychosocial stress during the lockdown. Parents’ cultural values were also associated with their stress level, pointing to their importance when implementing lockdown measures.

Authors

• Nils Schuhmacher, University of Münster
  Presenting Author

• Roman Stengelin, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
  Non-Presenting Author

• Theo Toppe, Max-Planck-Institut für Evolutionäre Anthropologie
  Non-Presenting Author