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Children and COVID-19 Research Library

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

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1 - 15 of 177
Family climate in pandemic times: adolescents and mothers

AUTHOR(S)
Thomas Eichhorn; Simone Schüller; Hannah Sinja Steinberg (et al.)

Published: January 2023   Journal: Social Inclusion
This article examines changes in family climate during the first Covid‐19‐related lockdown in Germany. It compares the perspectives of mothers and adolescents to explore whether the factors of perceived changes in family climate are systematically and significantly different between these groups. It measures family climate as positive emotional climate, a sub‐dimension of the family environment scale, to capture a feeling of cohesion and emotional openness within the family. Based on family system theory and the family stress model, it expects an overall deterioration in family climate due to increased environmental adaptation in the pandemic. Furthermore, it expects family climate to deteriorate less when families have economic and social resources available. On the other hand, it assumes that being employed and/or primarily responsible for family care relates to a stronger decline in the family climate. This study employs longitudinal survey data (AID:A) from around 300 German families with children aged nine to 17 and applys individual fixed effects models to investigate changes in family climate from 2019 to 2020.
Understanding the epidemiology and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on domestic violence and child abuse in Saudi Arabia: a cross-sectional study

AUTHOR(S)
Fadiah Alkhattabi; Nawaf Al Faryan; Manar Alsaleh (et al.)

Published: January 2023   Journal: International Journal of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the impact of a pandemic on the lives of vulnerable members of the community who have experienced or are ‘at risk’ of experiencing intimate family violence and child abuse in Saudi Arabia. By reviewing the experience in Saudi Arabia in the context of the international literature, the study explores similarities and differences in the impact of the pandemic on family violence. The study investigated the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on family violence and child abuse in Saudi Arabia by conducting a comparative analysis of the prevalence of cases, types of abuse, and geographical location of those experiencing violence between the years 2019 and 2020. Data were obtained from the Family Violence Reporting Center 1919 in Saudi Arabia.

"Mature enough to handle it?": gendered parental interventions in and adolescents' reactions to technology use during the pandemic

AUTHOR(S)
Hillary Steinberg; Stefanie Mollborn; Jennifer Pace

Published: January 2023   Journal: Journal of Family Issues
This study investigated how teenagers reacted to parental regulation of technology. Using longitudinal dyadic interviews with 24 teenagers and their 21 parents in two predominantly white middle-class communities, it explored how teenagers used technology during the COVID-19 pandemic and the differential consequences parental interventions had for teens’ well-being and confidence with technology. Parents’ narratives and actions about technology use were deeply gendered. Boys felt confident about their self-regulation of technology, and parents did not substantially limit boys’ technology use during the pandemic. Girls were less confident about their ability to self-regulate and either worked with their mothers to manage technology, distrusted parents who monitored them, or lacked access to virtual hangout spaces such as video games and social media.
Digital–environmental habitus of families in England in times of pandemic

AUTHOR(S)
Maria Laura Ruiu; Gabriele Ruiu; Massimo Ragnedda

Published: January 2023   Journal: New Media & Society
This article uses adopts a revised version of the concept of techno-environmental habitus to investigate and make sense of the differentiation among digital technology users’ attitudes towards the environment in England. Digital–environmental habitus refers to the combination of structural determinants (existing background) and the metabolised increased use of digital technologies in people’s everyday life that also interacts with individual environmental attitudes.
Family functioning buffers the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic for children's quality of life and loneliness

AUTHOR(S)
Micah A. Skeens; Kylie Hill; Anna Olsavsky (et al.)

Published: January 2023   Journal: Frontiers in Psychology
COVID-19 resulted in mass quarantine measures early in the pandemic. This disruption of daily life widened inequities and made children one of the most vulnerable populations during the crisis. This national, cross-sectional “COVID-Kids” study collected data from almost 500 parent–child dyads using standardized measures to better understand the effects of COVID exposure and impact on children’s quality of life and loneliness. Data were collected via social media from May to July 2020. According to parent proxy and child self-report, United States children experienced worse quality of life (p < 0.0001; d = 0.45 and 0.53) and greater child-reported loneliness (p < 0.0001) when compared to normative, healthy samples (i.e., children who do not have a chronic medical condition). Older children (r = 0.16, p = 0.001) and female children (r = 0.11, p = 0.02) reported greater loneliness. Higher child-reported family functioning scores were associated with better quality of life (r = 0.36, p < 0.0001) and less loneliness (r = −0.49, p < 0.0001). Moderated mediation analyses indicated the indirect effect of parent COVID impact on the association between COVID exposure and child quality of life was weaker in the context of better family functioning.
Parental COVID‐19–related health information practises, sources, evaluations and needs: a qualitative interview study

AUTHOR(S)
Hala Altawil; Ronny Klawunn; Marie-Luise Dierks (et al.)

Published: December 2022   Journal: Health Expectations

Parents of infants and young children may have specific health information needs and preferences, as they are responsible for their children's health. COVID-19 posed many challenges for families, not least in terms of the constantly updated disease-prevention guidelines. However, little is known about parents' experiences with this unprecedented situation, that is, how and where they seek, use and evaluate COVID-19 (child)-specific health information. This study aimed to find out more about this to provide insights to health (information) providers when communicating pandemic information to parents. It conducted semistructured telephone interviews (August to October 2020) with a purposively selected sample of 20 German-speaking and 10 Arabic-speaking parents of children up to 4 years old. Recruitment occurred through multiple channels, including childcare institutions and social media. Qualitative content analysis of the interview transcripts illustrates the main differences between the two groups.

Telework during COVID-19: effects on the work–family relationship and well-being in a quasi-field experiment

AUTHOR(S)
Maria José Chambel; Vânia Sofia Carvalho; Alda Santos

Published: December 2022   Journal: Sustainability
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, organizations are forced to adopt teleworking. However, little is known about this work modality longitudinally. This study aims to clarify the impact of continuing to work on the organization’s premises and shifting to a telework situation on the work and family relationship and employees’ well-being. Using a sample of 435 bank employees with two waves, two groups were compared: (1) workers who continued to work on the organization’s premises (213), and (2) workers’ who had shifted to a telework situation (222). The first set of data were collected prior to the pandemic and the second approximately 10 months after its onset.
Family resilience during the COVID-19 onset: A daily-diary inquiry into parental employment status, parent–adolescent relationships, and well-being

AUTHOR(S)
Ming-Te Wang; Juan Del Toro; Daphne A. Henry (et al.)

Published: December 2022   Journal: Development and Psychopathology
COVID-19 changed the landscape of employment and financial security in the USA, contributing to multi-systemic disruptions in family life. Using dyadic, daily-diary parent–adolescent data from a nationwide American sample (18,415 daily assessments; 29 days: 4/8/2020–4/21/2020 and 5/18/2020–6/1/2020; N = 635 parent–adolescent dyads), this intensive longitudinal study investigated how COVID-19-related job loss and working-from-home (WFH) arrangements influenced parents’ and children’s daily affect indirectly through family functioning (i.e., parent–adolescent conflict, inter-adult conflict, and parental warmth) and whether these links varied by family socioeconomic status (SES). Parental employment status was linked to these family relational dynamics, which were then connected to parents’ and adolescents’ daily affect.
Parents' work arrangements and gendered time use during the COVID-19 pandemic

AUTHOR(S)
Thomas Lyttelton; Emma Zang; Kelly Musick

Published: December 2022   Journal: Journal of Marriage and Family

This study uses time diaries to examine how parents' work arrangements shaped their time use at home and work during the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic transformed home and work life for parents, disrupting employment and childcare. The shift to work from home offered more flexibility to manage increased care burdens, but the lack of separation between work and family also likely contributed to more challenging work environments, especially among mothers. This study relies on the 2017–2020 American Time Use Survey and matching to estimate changes in time use among parents working from home and on site in the pandemic relative to comparable parents prior to the pandemic.

Children's services and the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy: a study with educators and parents

AUTHOR(S)
Maria Letizia Bosoni

Published: December 2022   Journal: Children & Society
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused disruptive changes across different life experiences essential to children's growth and development, including early childcare services and schools, thus threatening precious opportunities for children in early childhood to learn. The pandemic has also undermined the collaborative and alliance relationship between childcare services and families which has been widely considered an important aspect of modern services. This paper presents and discusses results from a mixed-method exploratory study with early childcare services for children between 0 and 6 years in Italy in 2021, involving both teachers and parents, to understand experiences, educational practices put in place in childcare services, feelings, resources and risks perceived by families and teachers.
Coping with the COVID-19 lockdown: the role of household and family responsibilities in Beijing

AUTHOR(S)
Weilin Xu; Martin Dijst; Yanwei Chai

Published: December 2022   Journal: Transactions in Planning and Urban Research
The COVID-19 pandemic combined with lockdown measures fundamentally changed urban family life worldwide. This article compares how different household types—singles, couples, nuclear families, and extended families—experienced the lockdown during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing. It argues that not only the household responsibilities associated with household types at the household level, but also the family responsibilities on a larger geographical scale must be considered to understand the challenges faced by different households under the COVID-19 lockdown in urban China, where intergenerational supports such as family responsibilities to other generations living apart are prevalent during the pre-pandemic stage due to the collectivist culture. This article contributes the lens of household diversity and geographic distance to understanding everyday lives of families under lockdown and to reflect on family transformation in urban China over the past decades more broadly. Through the study of families, it also has implications for neighborhood planning and management aimed at mitigating a pandemic’s negative impacts.
Parental and other caregiver loss due to COVID-19 in the United States: prevalence by race, state, relationship, and child age

AUTHOR(S)
Dan Treglia; J. J. Cutuli; Kamyar Arasteh (et al.)

Published: December 2022   Journal: Journal of Community Health
The more than one million COVID-19 deaths in the United States include parents, grandparents, and other caregivers for children. These losses can disrupt the social, emotional, and economic well-being of children, their families, and their communities, and understanding the number and characteristics of affected children is a critical step in responding. We estimate the number of children who lost a parent or other co-residing caregiver to COVID-19 in the U.S. and identify racial, ethnic, and geographic disparities by aligning COVID-19 death counts through mid-May 2022 with household information from a representative sample of individuals. We estimate that 216,617 children lost a co-residing caregiver to COVID-19; 77,283 lost a parent and more than 17,000 children lost the only caregiver with whom they lived. Non-White children were more than twice as likely as White children to experience caregiver loss, and children under 14 years old experienced 70% of caregiver loss.
We survived the pandemic together: the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Canadian families living with chronic pain

AUTHOR(S)
Tieghan Killackey; Sabine Soltani; Melanie Noel (et al.)

Published: December 2022   Journal: Canadian Journal of Pain

Pediatric chronic pain is a significant problem in Canada, affecting one in five youth. This study describes the impact of the pandemic on the experiences of Canadian families living with chronic pain through interviews with youth living with chronic pain, parents, and siblings. Employing a qualitative descriptive design, in-depth semistructured interviews were completed with Canadian youth living with pain, as well as parents and siblings. Participants were not required to be related. Interviews were analyzed using a reflexive thematic analysis approach.

Family predictors of physical activity change during the COVID-19 lockdown in preschool children in Germany

AUTHOR(S)
Franziska Beck; Stefen C. E. Schmidt; Alexander Woll (et al.)

Published: December 2022   Journal: Journal of Behavioral Medicine
The COVID-19 pandemic is associated with crucial changes in children’s daily life including their physical activity (PA) and screen time (ST). Among preschool children, the family represents an important factor for sufficient PA levels by being the gatekeeper for PA. Thus, the aim of this study was to investigate the influence of the family environment, specifically SES, parental support, and having siblings on COVID-19-related changes of PA and ST behavior in 317 (170 boys, 147 girls) German preschool children using longitudinal data.
Risks and opportunities for children's well-being in resource-constrained multigenerational households during COVID-19: implications for school psychology interventions

AUTHOR(S)
Kamleshie Mohangi

Published: December 2022   Journal: School Psychology International
The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic had a global impact on family social and economic well-being. Individuals and families sought alternative living arrangements as a result of the financial crisis, health implications, and housing insecurity, with many joining multigenerational households. However, it is unknown how multigenerational family life affects children's well-being. Therefore, this qualitative study explored risks and resilience-building opportunities for children's psychological and social well-being in resource-constrained multigenerational households during the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa. Five multigenerational families were selected through snowball sampling and case design. The three generations of participants were grandparents (n = 5), parents (n = 7), and children (n = 4). Data were gathered through a questionnaire and interviews. The study received institutional ethics approval. After thematic analysis, two themes and six sub-themes were identified. Risks were related to interpersonal conflict, family collective fear of COVID-19, and children's multiple other fears. Opportunities were identified as academic support, shared responsibilities, life skills and values acquisition, and family cohesion.
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UNICEF Innocenti's Children and COVID-19 Library is a database collecting research from around the world on COVID-19 and its impacts on children and adolescents.

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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.