Problems or prospects? Being a parent in the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany

Angelika Ecker; Irina Jarvers; Daniel Schleicher; Stephanie Kandsperger; Iris Schelhorn; Marie Meyer; Thomas Borchert; Michael Lüdtke; Youssef Shiban

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.901249

Problems or prospects? Being a parent in the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany

Front Psychol. 2022 Aug 5:13:901249. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.901249. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Angelika Ecker¹, Irina Jarvers¹, Daniel Schleicher¹, Stephanie Kandsperger¹, Iris Schelhorn², Marie Meyer³, Thomas Borchert³, Michael Lüdtke³, Youssef Shiban³

Affiliations

¹ Clinic of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany.
² Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany.
³ Department of Psychology, Private University of Applied Sciences, Göttingen, Germany.

Abstract

Background: In the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, many restrictions hit people in ways never seen before. Mental wellbeing was affected and burden was high, especially for high-risk groups such as parents. However, to our knowledge no research has yet examined whether being a parent was not only a risk for psychological burden but also a way to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods: An online survey was used to collect data from 1,121 participants from April to June 2020. In addition to demographic variables, risk factors (financial burden, problems complying with COVID-19 restrictions, and pre-treatment due to mental health problems) and protective factors (emotion regulation, humor, and crisis self-efficacy) were collected. The dataset was divided into three groups: parents whose children lived at home (n = 395), parents whose children did not (no longer) live at home (n = 165), and people who were not parents (n = 561).

Results: A linear mixed effect model showed that parents had no higher burden than non-parents, and even less when children did not live at home. Expected risk factors were generally less important, and there were no differences between parents and non-parents. In contrast, parents had advantages in protective factors.

Conclusion: In the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was shown that parents (with and without their children at home) were not necessarily at risk due to additional burden, but also had prospects of coping better with the situation than people without children.

Keywords: COVID-19; parents; protective factors; psychological burden; risk factors.