Computer school is the best: Family responses to distance learning in response to COVID-19

• In Event: Poster Session 03
  In Poster Session: PS 03 Topic - Solicited Content: COVID-19 Related

Abstract

When the COVID-19 global pandemic began to affect life in the United States, many school districts and local governments improvised distance learning plans and shelter in place orders that resulted in non-essential parents working from home and children participating in school from their homes. Historically, in heterosexual relationships, women have assumed more responsibilities for child care and coordination than their male partners, and we anticipated that the COVID-19 crisis would have implications for families. To that end, in May of 2020 we used Amazon’s mTurk workforce recruitment tool to sample one parent from 398 families (n = 177 male) who had children and a partner in the home. Participants provided information about marital processes like interparental conflict and coparenting we well as the responses of each child in the home to distance learning. For the child’s responses to COVID, we asked on a scale from 1 (very slightly or not at all) to 5 (extremely) whether children talked about COVID, were easily distracted, were forgetful, were disorganized, were refusing to participate in school, were zoning out, and were exhibiting more behavior problems. Our problematic adjustment scale formed a highly reliable scale (𝛼 = .85) and scores were summed such that higher scores indicated more problems for children. Regardless of whether the reporter was a mother or father, mothers were assuming more responsibilities for distance learning than their male partners (ꭓ2 = 29.08, p < .001). At the mean level, fathers tended to see more problem behaviors in their children than mothers (t = 2.418, p = .016) and also perceived more interparental conflict (t = 3.922, p < .001). To our hypothesis that distance learning was placing a burden on families, we found that there was a positive correlation between the number of children doing distance learning at home and levels of interparental conflict (r = .166, p = .001). We also found that when children were struggling to adjust to distance learning, parents reported more interparental conflict (r = .499, p < .001) and less coparenting (r = .294, p < .001). We also report differences between children within families to explore whether younger children are more negatively impacted by distance learning than older children. While it is unprecedented in the history of the United State for families to be engaged in compulsory distance learning while also working from home, our findings suggest that families are struggling in ways that are both predictable and possibly unavoidable. Our findings have implications for those who work with families, especially educators and social workers.

Authors

• Jeff Cookston, San Francisco State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Willow Garland Weibel, San Francisco State University
  Presenting Author

• Tiffany Pascal, San Francisco State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jeren Rodrillo, San Francisco State University
  Non-Presenting Author