What School Closure Left in Its Wake: Contrasting Evidence Between Parents and Children from the First COVID-19 Outbreak

Takaku, Reo; Yokoyama, Izumi

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3693484

Cited by 12 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…Due to the setting and the novel data, we can explore the impact of school closure on parents' mental health by comparing school closure and reopening periods. We find that school closures decreased the mental health of mothers with children who were primary school pupils, which concurs with other COVID-19 work by Takaku and Yokoyama (2020) arguing that marital relationships deteriorated as a result of school closures. The key finding of this work is that the negative effect of school closures on mental health is observed for less-educated mothers, but not for mothers with higher education levels.…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 91%

“…Under the school closures, marital relationships worsened in March 2020 but did not persist for 4 months until August 2020 (Takaku and Yokoyama 2020). Thus, this kind of negative effect of school closure is temporary if the school is reopened.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, the experience of school closure possibly dented parenting confidence. COVID-19 disturbed the rhythm of the child's life, which increased the children's body weight and hence the mother felt anxious about child-rearing, which persisted until August (Takaku and Yokoyama 2020). Researchers view the 'mothers' lack of parenting confidence…as one of the most serious problems facing families in contemporary.'…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The closure of schools critically increased childcare for parents, which disproportionately affects women in Italy during the COVID-19 pandemic (Del Boca et al 2020). School closures in Japan increased domestic violence, children's weight, and mothers' anxiety over how to raise their children (Takaku and Yokoyama 2020). 14 In Singapore, the state of lockdown resulted in a clear decline in people's life satisfaction, and its level remained below its level before the COVID-19 spread even after the lockdown was deregulated in Singapore (Cheng et al 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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School closures and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan

Yamamura

Tsustsui

2021

J Popul Econ

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The spread of the novel coronavirus disease caused schools in Japan to close to cope with the pandemic. In response to the school closures, parents of students were obliged to care for their children during the daytime, when children usually were at school. Did the increase in the burden of childcare influence parents’ mental health? Based on short panel data from mid-March to mid-April 2020, we explore how school closures influenced the mental health of parents with school-aged children. Using a fixed-effects model, we find that school closures led to mothers of students suffering from worse mental health compared to other females, while the fathers’ mental health did not differ from that of other males. This tendency is only observed for less-educated mothers who had children attending primary school, not for those with children attending junior high school nor for more-educated mothers. The contribution of this paper is showing that school closures increased the inequality of mental health between genders and parents with different educational backgrounds.

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 91%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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School closures and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan

Yamamura

Tsustsui

2021

J Popul Econ

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“…In particular, daycares, schools, after-school programs, and camps closed, and other external supports such as babysitters and grandparents became unavailable. Consistent with the Structural Theory, screen time increased, exercise decreased, parents read less to their children, and parent mental health declined (Androutsos, Perperidi, Georgiou, & Chouliaras, 2021;Barnett & Jung, 2021;Bronikowska, Krzysztoszek, Łopatka, Ludwiczak, & Pluta, 2021;Carroll et al, 2020;Hartshorne et al, 2021;Medrano et al, 2021;Ng, Cooper, McHale, Clifford, & Woods, 2020;Olive et al, 2020;Paterson et al, 2021;Sciberras et al, 2020;Stienwandt et al, 2020;Takaku & Yokoyama, 2020).…”

Section: The Cultural Theorymentioning

confidence: 97%

Just give them childcare: The COVID-19 pandemic as a natural experiment in parenting practices

Hartshorne¹

2021

Preprint

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Correlations between parenting practices and child development outcomes are as established as anything in human behavior. Their causes remain controversial. Parenting practices are confounded with culture, socio-economic status, and genetics. As a general rule, randomized controlled experiments are impractical if not impossible. We use the COVID-19 pandemic school reopenings as a natural experiment to address this gap. A number of studies showed that the advent of the pandemic affected families negatively affected families. Prior work tied increased child recreational screen time and decreased parent mental health specifically to school and daycare closures (rather than work-at-home policies, unemployment, fluctuating COVID rates, etc.). However, losses are different from gains, and just because losing childcare hurts families does not mean increasing childcare will help them. We use the fact that schools reopened at different times and to different degrees across the country, showing that return to in-person schooling decreased child recreational screen time and improved parent mental health. Again, we rule out potential confounds like work-from-home policies, COVID rates, and unemployment. The results indicate that addressing childcare gaps may be critical to improving child and family well-being.

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Reopening schools in a context of low COVID-19 contagion: consequences for teachers, students and their parents

2022

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Knowing how school reopenings affect the spread of COVID-19 is crucial when balancing children’s right to schooling with contagion management. This paper considers the effects on COVID-19 testing prevalence and the positive test rate of reopening Norwegian schools after a 6-week closure aimed at reducing contagion. We estimate the effects of school reopening on teachers, parents and students using an event study/difference-in-differences design that incorporates comparison groups with minimal exposure to in-person schooling. We find no evidence that COVID-19 incidence increased following reopening among students, parents or teachers pooled across grade levels. We find some suggestive evidence that infection rates among upper secondary school teachers increased; however, the effects are small and transitory. At low levels of contagion, schools can safely be reopened when other social distancing policies remain in place.

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What School Closure Left in Its Wake: Contrasting Evidence Between Parents and Children from the First COVID-19 Outbreak

Cited by 12 publications

References 25 publications

School closures and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan

School closures and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan

Just give them childcare: The COVID-19 pandemic as a natural experiment in parenting practices

Reopening schools in a context of low COVID-19 contagion: consequences for teachers, students and their parents

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