Who suffered most? Parental stress and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany

Wer leidet am stärksten? Erziehungsstress und psychische Belastungen bei Eltern während der COVID-19 Pandemie in Deutschland

Jianghong Li, Mareike Bünning, Till Kaiser and Lena Hipp

EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, 2022, vol. 34, issue 1, 281-309

Abstract: [Objective:] This study examines gender and socioeconomic inequalities in parental psychological wellbeing (parenting stress and psychological distress) during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany [Background:] The dramatic shift of childcare and schooling responsibility from formal institutions to private households during the pandemic has put families under enormous stress and raised concerns about caregivers' health and wellbeing. Despite the overwhelming media attention to families’ wellbeing, to date limited research has examined parenting stress and parental psychological distress during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in Germany. [Method:] We analyzed four waves of panel data (N= 1,771) from an opt-in online survey, which was conducted between March 2020 and April 2021. Multivariable OLS regressions were used to estimate variations in the pandemic's effects on parenting stress and psychological distress by various demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. [Results:] Overall, levels of parenting stress and psychological distress increased during the pandemic. During the first and third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, mothers, parents with children younger than 11 years, parents with two or more children, parents working from home as well as parents with financial insecurity experienced higher parenting stress than other sociodemographic groups. Moreover, women, respondents with lower incomes, single parents, and parents with younger children experienced higher levels of psychological distress than other groups. [Conclusion:] Gender and socioeconomic inequalities in parents' psychological wellbeing increased among the study participants during the pandemic.

Keywords: COVID-19; parenting stress; gender inequality; mental health; psychological distress; Germany; children; Elternschaft; Stress; Geschlechterungleichheit; Kinder; psychische Gesundheit; psychische Belastung; Deutschland (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/242993/3/F ... ho-suffered-most.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:espost:242993

DOI: 10.20377/jfr-704

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters from ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (econstor@zbw-workspace.eu).