Mental Health and Worries During the Pandemic: Are Parents Faring Worse Than Non-Parents?

• In Event: Parenting Stress and Challenges During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Introduction: Parents are struggling with how to meet their children’s needs during in-person school closures and social distancing mandates. These challenges are occurring against the backdrop of ongoing economic strain and job loss. The stress of parenting during the pandemic has the potential to contribute to a "mental health crisis" for parents. This study examines mental health and financial worries comparing parents of younger children (aged 0 - 12) to other adults who did not have children.

Participants: Data were collected from participants throughout the U.S. via online surveys administered through a survey research company. The Time 1 survey was launched on March 24, 2020, nearly 2 weeks after the World Health Organization declared that the coronavirus was a pandemic on March 11, 2020, and one week after the White House issued social distancing guidelines. Time 2 was launched on April 14, 2020, and Time 3 was launched on April 30, 2020. We examined parents of at least one child age 0 - 12 (n = 468) and non-parents (n = 215). The average age was 33 years. 44% had at least a bachelor’s degree and identified as White (71%); 10% identified as Black; 9% identified as Hispanic; 9% identified in another category of race. Average household income in the prior year was $40,000 -- $50,000.

Analysis Plan: Data cleaning and descriptive analyses were run in Stata version 15.1. Longitudinal analyses were run in Mplus version 8. To examine changes in the dependent variables, we conducted linear piecewise growth models in Mplus with Bayesian estimation using multigroup models to compare parents of younger children to non-parents. Piecewise models tend to produce the statistical power needed to detect differences in slope estimates in small sample sizes, produce accurate slope estimates in the presence of missing data, and permit the examination of change over time.

Results:
Bivariate results indicated that parents of younger children were more likely to meet criteria for moderate to severe anxiety at T2 and T3, and had higher levels of worry domains at T2 and T3.
Depression – PHQ-8 (Kroenke et al., 2008): Parents of younger children and non-parents had non-significant slopes from T1-T2. The likelihood of meeting major depression criteria decreased for non-parents from T2-T3, but the slope for parents was non-significant from T2-T3.
Anxiety – GAD-7 (Spitzer et al., 2006): Both groups showed a statistically significant decrease in the likelihood of meeting criteria for moderate to severe anxiety from T1-T2. From T2-T3, the slope was non-significant for both groups.
Worry Domains Questionnaire – Financial Domain Subscale (Tallis et al., 1992): Non-parents significantly decreased from T1-T2, but parents did not (DiffTest: p = .003). Parents decreased more than non-parents from T2-T3 (DiffTest: p < .001), although parents’ scores were still higher than non-parents at T2 and T3 on average.

Conclusions: Parents with younger children are in need of greater support to reduce the economic and parenting burdens presented during the pandemic. More attention should be given to economic assistance and mental health intervention for parents with young children.

Authors

• Shawna J. Lee, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
  Presenting Author

• Kaitlin Paxton Ward, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
  Non-Presenting Author