Carrying the Burden Into the Pandemic – Effects of Social Disparities on Elementary Students’ Parents’ Perception of Supporting Abilities and Emotional Stress During the COVID-19 Lockdown

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed many challenges, especially for families. Both the public and the scientific community are currently discussing the extent to which school closings have worsened existing social differences, especially with regard to children’s academic and socio-emotional development. At the same time, parents have had to manage childcare and home schooling alongside their jobs and personal burdens posed by the pandemic. Parents’ possibilities for meeting these cognitive and emotional challenges might also depend on the different conditions in families. For this reason, the present paper investigates the structural and process characteristics of the family as well as children’s and parents’ psychological characteristics that predict how parents assess their ability to support their child’s learning during homeschooling as well as parents’ perceived emotional stress caused by school closure. The study analyses data of the Newborn Cohort Study of the German National Educational Panel Study. The two dependent variables (self-assessment of abilities, perceived stress) were measured during the COVID-19 pandemic after the first school closure in Germany, at a time when the children of this cohort were attending second grade. Besides a number of control variables (including the child’s struggle with home schooling), families’ structural characteristics [socioeconomic status (SES), education], process characteristics (home learning environment, HLE), parents’ psychological characteristics (preceding psychological stress), and the child’s psychological characteristics (self-regulation, school-related independence) from earlier waves were included as predictors. The results of structural equation models show that perceived stress was associated with structural factors and the preceding psychological stress of parents. Parents with higher preceding stress reported higher perceived stress. Interestingly, higher-educated parents also reported more stress than lower educated parents during the pandemic. The effect was the other way around for SES – parents with lower SES reported more stress than parents with higher SES. The self-reported abilities to support the learning of the child seemed to be mainly predicted by the parent’s education as well as preceding psychological stress. To sum up, the results identify important aspects that determine how parents handle the challenges of the school closures. Especially, socially disadvantaged families carry their burden into the pandemic.

Parenting and pandemic pressures: Examining nuances in parent, child, and family well-being concerns during COVID-19 in a Canadian sample

“…This suggests that the proliferation of pandemic-related stressors may "get inside the family" through interpersonal exchanges across the family system and may also have a direct impact on parent perceptions of child mental and physical health (29). These results also highlight potential pathways of resilience in the quality of parent-child interactions, aligning with research suggesting that nurturant and involved parenting supports positive child adaptation, even during times of stress and economic risk (4,40).…”

“…Clinical implications of this work include the application of a family-wide framework to clinical service provision across broad healthcare spheres. These data support that care-providers-particularly for children and families-should be aware of both the family stress and family systems frameworks when considering post-pandemic parenting concerns (20,40). Our results are complimentary to the findings from a longitudinal study during the pandemic by Calvano and colleagues (52) that advocate for family-oriented intervention efforts to mitigate risks for both parents and children in relation to parent-reported stress and psychological well-being during the course of the pandemic.…”

Faktor yang Memengaruhi Stres pada Remaja Selama Pandemi Covid-19

“…Pembelajaran jarak jauh selain meningkatkan stres remaja juga meningkatkan stres orang tua pada penggunaan teknologi demi mendukung pembelajaran anak. Orang tua berpendidikan tinggi juga melaporkan lebih banyak stres daripada orang tua berpendidikan rendah selama pandemi (Vogelbacher & Attig, 2022). Tingkat pendidikan orang tua serta dukungan jarak jauh yang diberikan oleh guru secara signifikan berhubungan dengan frekuensi aktivitas rumah (Chenyi Zhang et al, 2021).…”

Theorieunterricht in Fahrschulen

“…treffen. Dies deckt sich mit einer Reihe von Studien zu den negativen Auswirkungen der Corona-bedingten Schulschließungen auf das Lernen aus den verschiedensten Ländern wie Australien [6], Deutschland [59], Indien [39] oder Norwegen [10]…”

“…Dies deckt sich mit einer Reihe von Studien zu den negativen Auswirkungen der Corona-bedingten Schulschließungen auf das Lernen aus den verschiedensten Ländern wie Australien 6 , Deutschland 59 , Indien 39 oder Norwegen 10 . Halten wir daher fest: Dass die Behaltensleistung beim Erwerb von Wissen durch Präsenzunterricht wesentlich höher ist als durch digitalen Distanzunterricht, wurde im Rahmen der Corona-Pandemie besonders deutlich.…”