Rural Parent and Child Functioning During COVID-19: Before and After Remote Instruction

• In Event: Poster Session 12
  In Poster Session: PS 12 Topic - Solicited Content: COVID-19 Related

Abstract

Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, researchers have projected that school closures will negatively impact children’s academic functioning (Kuhfeld, Soland, Tarasawa, Johnson, Ruzek, & Liu, 2020). Likewise, researchers have presented conceptual frameworks explaining the risks to child and family social/emotional well-being (Prime, Wade, & Browne, 2020). However, little is known about the impact of the pandemic on parent and child functioning in a rural population, which presents its own strengths (e.g., strong sense of community) and challenges (e.g., lack of resources). The current study therefore focuses on rural parent reports of parent and child functioning both before and after the shift to remote instruction.

Forty-five parents of elementary-aged children in a rural area of New York completed an online questionnaire in which they rated various aspects of their own functioning and their child’s academic, behavioral, emotional, and social functioning on a 10-point scale (Strongly disagree to Strongly agree; Never to Always). Parents completed all ratings twice – once based on a retrospective account of the weeks prior to the shift to remote instruction, and once based on their time during remote instruction.

Our parent outcomes of interest clustered in four areas: (1) involvement in schooling, (2) ability to help with schoolwork, (3) daily routine/home-work balance, and (4) parents’ own social-emotional functioning. Our child outcomes of interest were related to (1) academic, (2) behavioral, (3) emotional, and (4) social functioning. We conducted paired sample t-tests to compare retrospective reports of parent and child functioning prior to COVID-19 and current reports during remote instruction on these outcomes.

Before remote instruction, on average, parents were moderately involved in their child’s schooling (6/10 or higher) and felt generally positive about their own abilities and functioning (8/10 or higher). During remote instruction, parents felt less connected to the parents of their children’s classmates. They did, however, largely maintain similar levels of communication with teachers. After the shift to remote instruction due to COVID-19, parents’ self-reported abilities and functioning remained somewhat positive (6/10 or higher). But comparatively, parents felt less able to help with their child’s schoolwork, had less of a daily routine/home-work balance, and expressed poorer social-emotional functioning.

Before the shift to remote instruction, parents viewed their children’s academic, behavioral, emotional, and social functioning positively overall (6/10 or higher). After switching to remote instruction, parents felt that how much their children liked school and their children’s communication with their teachers remained similar to before, but all other areas of their development suffered. They reported significant drops in their children’s academic (e.g., doing well at schoolwork), behavioral (e.g., being easily distracted), emotional (e.g., being irritable), and social (e.g., being lonely) functioning. Descriptive and inferential statistics for some parent and child variables are available in Table 1.

There is a scarcity of research that focuses on rural settings. This study shows that, during involuntary remote instruction, parents in a rural setting experienced significant worsening of their own functioning and reported similar struggles for their children’s functioning. There were notable exceptions (e.g., communication with teachers), which should be viewed as potential areas of resilience.

Authors

• Suzannah Chatlos, SUNY Plattsburgh
  Presenting Author

• Preeti Samudra, SUNY Plattsburgh
  Non-Presenting Author