LMU study shows: Corona pandemic has put families under long-term strain

08.05.2023 17:59

Not just the lockdowns, but the entire pandemic period had negative effects on children and families. Parental stress was a major risk factor for children's psychosocial well-being. Study shows short- and long-term effects after lockdowns for the first time.

Looking back, the corona pandemic appears to consist of an up and down of lockdowns and subsequent easing of the strict curfews. But for children and families, things have been going downhill in the long term since the first lockdown in spring 2020. A team at the Chair of Developmental Psychology and Educational Psychology at the LMU under the leadership of Professor Markus Paulus (https://www.psy.lmu.de/epp/personen/professoren/markus_paulus/) shows that the children's well-being recovered in the short term after the first lockdown was over. But viewed over the entire period, the pandemic had a negative impact. A major factor in this was parental stress.

“The lockdowns were tough, of course. “But our study also shows that the well-being of families fell over the entire period of the corona pandemic,” says Dr. Samuel Essler (https://www.psy.lmu.de/epp/personen/wiss_ma/samuel-essler/index.html), study author and staff member at the chair.

Parental stress has taken its toll on children

The study was the first to examine children's psychosocial well-being over different phases of lockdown and easing in the long term. “It is the first study that can distinguish general effects of the pandemic from lockdown-specific effects on children’s well-being,” says Markus Paulus.

The results initially confirm how important contact with peers is. The children's well-being fell in the first lockdown due to their isolation from their peers. At the same time, some families managed to benefit from the fact that there was suddenly more time for each other during the first lockdown. However, this effect did not last. On the contrary: the well-being of the entire family decreased continuously until the end of the study period in winter 2020/21. Even regardless of the lockdowns, this put a strain on the children.

A major risk factor for the children's emotional situation was increasing parental stress. The more stressed the parents were, the worse off the children were. This was particularly noticeable when the second lockdown began.

Only a good parent-child relationship protected the children from the negative effects of the pandemic; it was a “resilience factor,” as Essler says.

As part of the study, families were asked about their well-being from spring 2020, the first lockdown, to the end of the last lockdown in March 2021. The study examined emotional difficulties, behavioral problems and hyperactivity of children, the well-being of the family as a whole, parental stress and the quality of the relationship between parent and child.