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Children and COVID-19 Research Library

UNICEF Innocenti's curated library of COVID-19 + Children research

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76 - 90 of 104
The impact of COVID-19 related lockdown measures on self-reported psychopathology and health-related quality of life in German adolescents

AUTHOR(S)
Julian Koenig; Elisabeth Kohls; Markus Moessner (et al.)

Published: July 2021   Journal: European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
The impact of school-closings on adolescents’ mental health and well-being in the management of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is subject to ongoing public debate. Reliable data to inform a balanced discussion are limited. Drawing on a large ongoing multi-site project in Germany, we assessed differences in self-reported psychopathology in a matched convenience-sample of adolescents assessed pre- (November 26, 2018 to March 13, 2020; n = 324) and post the first lockdown (March 18, 2020 to August 29, 2020; n = 324) early 2020 in Germany.
Presentation of a participatory approach to develop preventive measures to reduce COVID-19 transmission in child care

AUTHOR(S)
Mathias Diebig; Susan Gritzka; Nico Dragano (et al.)

Published: July 2021   Journal: Journal of Occupational Medicine and Toxicology volume
It can be suspected that work in child care facilities is associated with an elevated exposure risk towards SARS-CoV-2 infections. It is still unclear under which conditions employees in those facilities can safely pursue their work. Preventive workplace-related measures to reduce transmission dynamics in this work environment need to be developed. These measures need to build on a solid scientific foundation and be ready for practical use at the same time. Therefore, the aim of the study is to present a participatory approach to identify, minimize, and eliminate workplace-specific COVID-19 transmission within child care. The approach presented combines quantitative as well as qualitative elements and includes a screening of critical workplace conditions and the development of preventive measures to foster a safe workplace design.
Sharing the caring? The gender division of care work during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany

AUTHOR(S)
Jonas Jessen; C. Katharina Spiess; Sevrin Waights (et al.)

Published: June 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic and related closures of daycare centers and schools significantly increased the amount of care work done by parents. There is much speculation over whether the pandemic increased or decreased gender equality in parental care work. Based on representative data for Germany we present an empirical analysis that shows greater support for the latter rather than the former hypothesis.
Leisure time sports and exercise activities during the COVID-19 pandemic: a survey of working parents

AUTHOR(S)
Michael Mutz; Anne K. Reimers

Published: June 2021   Journal: German Journal of Exercise and Sport Research
Many working parents experienced a double burden of fulltime employment and increased childcare obligations during the COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic. This paper explores how this twofold burden affected leisure time sports and exercise (LTSE). Following a gender inequality perspective, it is assumed that the level of LTSE of working mothers are more negatively affected by the pandemic than LTSE levels of working fathers. Using the nation-wide representative SPOVID survey, the paper analyses data of all respondents in fulltime employment (N = 631). Data collection took place in October and November 2020 in collaboration with Forsa, a leading corporation for public opinion polls in Germany.
Subjective Well-Being of Adolescents in Luxembourg, Germany, and Brazil During the COVID-19 Pandemic

AUTHOR(S)
Pascale M. J. Engel de Abreu; Sascha Neumann; Cyril Wealer (et al.)

Published: June 2021   Journal: Journal of Adolescent Health

This study explores adolescent well-being during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in two high-income countries from Europe and one middle-income country from South America. The aim is to investigate the correlates of different dimensions of subjective well-being in 10- to 16-year-olds from different cultural contexts. An online, self-report questionnaire was completed by 1,613 adolescents in Luxembourg, Germany, and Brazil between May and July 2020. The outcome variables were measures of life satisfaction and emotional well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study included a range of sociodemographic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal covariates. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and latent variable structural equational modeling.

Neither backlash nor convergence: dynamics of intracouple childcare division after the first COVID-19 lockdown and subsequent reopening in Germany

AUTHOR(S)
Christina Boll; Dana Müller; Simone Schüller

Published: May 2021
Using unique monthly panel data from the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) covering the immediate postlockdown period from June to August 2020, we investigate the opposing claims of widening/closing the gender gap in parental childcare during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany. We contribute to the current literature by analyzing the medium-term dynamics of couples’ childcare division and by considering the prepandemic division rather than providing merely snapshots during lockdown.
Ghosts in the nursery in exile: supporting parenting in exile during the COVID-19 pandemic

AUTHOR(S)
Lena Schestag; Janina Mehner-Gentner; Lea Stein (et al.)

Published: May 2021   Journal: International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies
The early prevention project “Strong together!” supports refugee parents and their young children (0–4 years) in Berlin, Germany. It aims to mitigate the transmission of trauma to the generation born in exile. For refugee families who have only recently arrived in Germany, the COVID-19 pandemic poses a particularly great challenge. Not only are they confronted with numerous challenges in respect to re-building their lives in Germany after fleeing war and persecution, but are also vulnerable to conscious and unconscious anxieties, fantasies, and conflicts evoked by the pandemic and the threat it poses to their lives. This was observed in the context of the mother–child groups of “Strong together!”. Many expressed great insecurity, heightened levels of anxiety, re-experiencing of traumatic scenes, and over-strictly self-isolating themselves and their children, even attraction to fundamentalist ideologies. In this paper, some of the empirical and clinical findings of “Strong together!” are summarized and reflected on within a framework of psychoanalytic trauma theory.
Does re-opening schools contribute to the spread of SARS-CoV-2? Evidence from staggered summer breaks in Germany

AUTHOR(S)
Ingo E. Isphording; Marc Lipfert; Nico Pestel

Published: May 2021   Journal: Journal of Public Economics
This paper studies the effect of the end of school summer breaks on SARS-CoV-2 cases in Germany. The staggered timing of summer breaks across federal states allows us to implement an event study design. We base our analysis on official daily counts of confirmed coronavirus infections by age groups across all 401 German counties. We consider an event window of two weeks before and four weeks after the end of summer breaks. We do not find evidence of a positive effect of school re-openings on case numbers. For individuals aged between 5 and 59 years, comprising school-aged children and their parents, our preferred specification indicates that the end of summer breaks had a negative but insignificant effect on the number of new confirmed cases.
Cite this research | Open access | Vol.: 198 | No. of pages: 9 | Language: English | Topics: Health | Tags: COVID-19 response, disease transmission, infectious disease, lockdown, school attendance | Countries: Germany
Homeschooling during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic: the role of students’ trait self-regulation and task attributes of daily learning tasks for students’ daily self-regulation

AUTHOR(S)
Friederike Blume; Andrea Schmidt; Andrea C. Kramer

Published: April 2021   Journal: Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft
As a means to counter the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, schools were closed throughout Germany between mid-March and end of April 2020. Schooling was translocated to the students’ homes where students were supposed to work on learning tasks provided by their teachers. Students’ self-regulation and attributes of the learning tasks may be assumed to have played important roles when adapting to this novel schooling situation. They may be predicted to have influenced students’ daily self-regulation and hence the independence with which they worked on learning tasks. The present work investigated the role of students’ trait self-regulation as well as task difficulty and task enjoyment for students’ daily independence from their parents in learning during the homeschooling period.
‘No one listens to us … ’ COVID-19 and its socio-spatial impact on children and young people in Germany

AUTHOR(S)
Angela Million

Published: April 2021   Journal: Children's Geographies
The handling of COVID-19 in Germany has shown that children, young people and families are not a top priority. Available studies identify a significant socio-spatial impact in this regard. Limits and conflicts can be discerned due to domestic concentration, wh blurs times and spaces and highlights the dependency of families in Germany on social infrastructure. During lockdown, there is a rise in digitalized activities, but homeschooling reveals a digital divide and reinforces the existing lack of equal opportunities for students. While new spatial movements create better spaces for children, young people face an ongoing struggle with the limitations created by the pandemic.
The gendered politics of pandemic relief: labor and family policies in Denmark, Germany, and the United States during COVID-19

AUTHOR(S)
Nino Bariola; Caitlyn Collins

Published: March 2021   Journal: American Behavioral Scientist
The COVID-19 pandemic has magnified families’ struggles to reconcile caregiving and employment, especially for working mothers. How have different countries reacted to these troubling circumstances? What policies have been implemented to alleviate the pernicious effects of the pandemic on gender and labor inequalities? This research examined the policies offered in Denmark, Germany, and the United States, three countries that represent distinct welfare regimes. It found important differences among the policy solutions provided, but also in the “cultural infrastructures” that allow policies to work as intended, or not.
Well‐being and COVID‐19‐related worries of German children and adolescents: a longitudinal study from pre‐COVID to the end of lockdown in Spring 2020

AUTHOR(S)
Mandy Vogel; Christof Meigen; Carolin Sobek (et al.)

Published: March 2021   Journal: JCPP Advances

There is concern that pandemic measures put a strain on the health and well‐being of children. We investigated the effects of the COVID‐19 pandemic, the lockdown, and social distancing on the well‐being, media use, and emotions of children and adolescents between 9 and 18 years. This paper used linear and proportional odds logistic regression correcting for age, sex, and socioeconomic status (SES) and to compare media use, peers/social support, physical, and psychological well‐being between 2019 (pre‐COVID baseline) and two time points shortly after the start of the lockdown (last week of March and April 2020, respectively) in 391 9–19‐year‐old healthy children and adolescents of the LIFE Child cohort. COVID‐19‐related feelings and their relationship to age, sex, and SES were assessed at two time points during lockdown.

Loss of childcare and classroom teaching during the Covid-19-related lockdown in spring 2020: A longitudinal study on consequences on leisure behavior and schoolwork at home

AUTHOR(S)
Tanja Poulain; Christof Meigen; Carolin Sobek (et al.)

Published: March 2021   Journal: Plos One

In spring 2020, the first Covid-19-related lockdown included the closing of kindergartens and schools. Home schooling, the lack of social contacts with peers and the care of the children at home posed an enormous challenge for many families. The present study investigated the leisure behavior of 285 one- to 10-year-old German children at two time points (t1 and t2) during the Covid-19-related lockdown in spring 2020. In the subsample of primary school children (n = 102), we also explored children’s attitudes towards schoolwork at home. Analyses focused on the change of behavior from t1 to t2, on differences in these changes depending on socio-economic status (SES), and on associations of behavior with SES, the number of children at home, and the frequency of receiving learning materials from school.

Families in the COVID-19 pandemic: parental stress, parent mental health and the occurrence of adverse childhood experiences—results of a representative survey in Germany

AUTHOR(S)
Claudia Calvano; Lara Engelke; Jessica Di Bella (et al.)

Published: March 2021   Journal: European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
Parenting during the COVID-19 pandemic is highly challenging, with parents having to meet various demands simultaneously. An increase in adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) has been widely predicted, but empirical evidence is still scarce. This study aimed to (1) generate representative data on pandemic-related stress, parental stress, general stress, parental subjective and mental health, and the occurrence of ACEs; (2) identify risk factors for an increase in ACEs, and (3) provide qualitative data on parents’ experiences. A representative survey was conducted in Germany in August 2020 with 1024 parents of underage children (Mage=41.70, 50.9% female).
A prospective study of mental health during the COVID‐19 pandemic in childhood trauma–exposed individuals: social support matters

AUTHOR(S)
Katja I. Seitz; Katja Bertsch; Sabine C. Herpertz

Published: February 2021   Journal: Journal of Traumatic Stress
The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic and its unprecedented social restrictions may have serious mental health implications, especially in individuals who have experienced childhood traumatic experiences (CTEs). This prospective study aimed to investigate whether general psychopathology and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptom severity increased during the pandemic as compared to prepandemic baseline data collected approximately 1 year earlier.
76 - 90 of 104

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COVID-19 & Children: Rapid Research Response

UNICEF Innocenti is mobilizing a rapid research response in line with UNICEF’s global response to the COVID-19 crisis. The initiatives we’ve begun will provide the broad range of evidence needed to inform our work to scale up rapid assessment, develop urgent mitigating strategies in programming and advocacy, and preparation of interventions to respond to the medium and longer-term consequences of the COVID-19 crisis. The research projects cover a rapid review of evidence, education analysis, and social and economic policies.