Proceedings of The 9th International Conference on New Findings in Humanities and Social Sciences
Year: 2023
DOI:
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Societal Restrictions Impact Parent-Child Relationship and Children’s Social, Behavioral, and Physical Health
Jessica Cottrell, Vanessa Rodriguez, and Fanli Jia
ABSTRACT:
The COVID-19 pandemic drastically changed the lives of everyone and resulted in major shifts in relationships between caregivers and children. The most notable of these was the shifts between in-person and remote settings for education and workplace. Consequently, shifting responsibilities led to new responsibilities like remote education which resulted in psychological stress for caregivers and children. The relationships between caregiver-child are paramount to proper development. This research aimed to assess the strain on transitions between the COVID-19 pandemic and returning to a normal environment on the caregiver-child relationship and more specifically its effect on social, behavioral, and physical well-being. To study this relationship a 62-question survey was developed which assessed general sociodemographic variables, covid-related stress, parental issues/communications and the child’s well-being and was randomly distributed used Qualtrics throughout the US during February to March 2024. The survey was completed by 532 caregivers of which 66% identified as mothers, 32% identified as fathers, and 1.7% identified as others. Of the children reference, 50.7% were male and 48.4% were female, and 1% identified as other. Approximately, 90% of the respondents were the primary caregiver of the child. Among 58% of respondents, 2020 was identified as the year they struggled the most with covid restrictions, followed by 18% as the year of 2021 and 12% as 2022. 71% of the respondents stated that they discussed COVID-19 greater than a moderate amount while today, 51% responded they are still frequently discussing COVID-19 in 2023. We are currently working on compiling the data to better understand these transitions and how they affected parent-child relationships.
keywords: COVID-19, children, psychological stress