Children and COVID-19 Research Library

There are an increasing number of people identifying as part of the LGBT community, with over 165,000 same-sex couples in the US having children in 2019. Research on parenting during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic has been disseminated. However, there is limited research that examines the experiences of same-sex parents. Therefore, a structured qualitative review of online blogs published during the Covid-19 pandemic, authored by same-sex parents, was conducted. Following thematic analysis, three main themes (and 13 subthemes) emerged: 1) Connection; 2) Contrasting experiences of home schooling; and 3) Pride in family. Similarities between same-sex and different-sex parents were highlighted. However, it is notable that same-sex parents continue to feel stigma and exclusion from the wider parenting community.

The arrival of COVID-19 pandemic led to a much-publicized mental health crisis for American youth. A subgroup of those youth particularly affected were transgender and gender diverse (TGD) children and adolescents. Yet, a psychoanalytic eye cast on these youth revealed not a crisis, but a dialectic: from a relational and intrapsychic perspective, it was the best of times and the worst of times for TGD young people. This article applies Winnicott’s concepts of mirroring and the author’s constructs of the true gender self, false gender self, and gender creativity to information gleaned from survey studies and clinical observation. These data were then used to analyze why some TGD children and adolescents experienced the shutdown phase of the pandemic as an opportunity to consolidate their gender self, while others experienced the shutdown as a significant environmental impingement and threat to their gender self and overall well-being.

This study explores the experiences of LGBTQ2S+ youth while accessing mental health and substance use care services during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through a series of facilitated virtual meetings, 33 LGBTQ2S+ youth from across Ontario participated in collaborative activities to identify barriers they have experienced when accessing mental health services, as well as potential solutions to these barriers. Discussions were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using thematic analysis.

On March 11th, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the worldwide outbreak of COVID-19 as a pandemic. On the following day, the Ontario government (Canada’s most populous province) ordered all public schools to close. By Monday, March 16th, 2020, all public schools (and most private schools) in Canada announced plans to physically shutter schools, with a shift to remote and online learning to follow soon after. This unprecedented shift in learning environment for young Canadians came at a time when the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic was creating a challenging environment for the mental health of all Canadians. While all students may have struggled to cope, 2SLGBTQ + students faced an unusually complex shift, as their school and home environments may have contributed differentially to the social supports and acceptance (related to their 2SLGBTQ + identity or identities) that their cisgender heterosexual peers routinely experience in their social surroundings. This paper explores the relationship between school attachment, parental involvement and positive mental health in 2SLGBTQ + youth using data collected as part of the Second Annual School Climate Survey on Homophobia, Biphobia, and Transphobia in Canadian Schools.

This study aims to compare and analyze the implications of COVID-19 on the sexual health of Mexican gay and bisexual young and adult men (GBM). It is an online survey with 1001 GBM participants. Information was collected on sexual desire, use of mobile applications, sexual practices during the pandemic, and prevention of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) from August to October 2020. Young participants were compared with adults.

This year’s State of the World’s Girls report, The Truth Gap, explores how adolescent girls and young women deal with misinformation and disinformation when engaging with political, civic or social topics online. 26,000 girls and young women from 26 countries were interviewed and alarming findings, including that 9 out of 10 have been harmed by false information and lies online were discovered.

The overlapping impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, accelerating climate disasters, and geopolitical conflict are a threat to gender equality and women’s rights across the globe. This report from UN Women and UNDP shows what governments can do now to prevent further rollbacks and recover lost ground, while enhancing resilience and preparedness for future shocks. Drawing on a unique global dataset of close to 5,000 measures adopted by 226 countries and territories in response to COVID-19, the report finds that, overall, government responses paid insufficient attention to gender dynamics. At the same time, instances of innovation and learning hold important lessons for gender-responsive policymaking in times of crisis.

Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, the lingering effects of the crisis are multidimensional, even in countries where the virus did not spread widely. For women and girls, existing gender inequalities and socioeconomic barriers have only been exacerbated. To assess the gendered consequences of the pandemic, UN Women and the Asian Development Bank worked with national governments to roll out Rapid Gender Assessment Surveys in seven countries in Asia and the Pacific. The survey findings showcase that women have been more likely than men to quit their jobs to take up unpaid family responsibilities, have been disproportionately affected by food hardship and, in some countries, have been less likely than men to receive vaccines. The data provided in this report is useful for governments, civil society and international institutions to continue to design targeted crisis response and recovery programming to support women and girls across Asia and the Pacific. The report is a follow-up publication to “Unlocking the Lockdown”, which UN Women published in 2020.

This study investigates associations between work-to-family conflict and parenting practices among lone and partnered working mothers and the role of working from home as a potential resource gain or drain for acting empathetically and supportively towards their children. Emerging evidence suggests that work-to-family conflict reduces responsive parenting practices, yet prior studies have rarely examined disparities by family structure. Although working from home has recently gained in importance in the workforce, there is still little research on its implications for the relationship between work-to-family conflict and the quality of parenting practices. If working from home is not used to do supplemental work during overtime hours, it may free up mothers’ time and emotional resources. In turn, this may either buffer the harmful impact of work-to-family conflict on parenting practices or indirectly enhance the quality of parenting practices by reducing work-to-family conflict. This could be particularly beneficial for lone mothers, who experience more role and time strain.

At the onset of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, there was global concern about the negative indirect impacts the crisis would have on girls and women and their human capital. Two years into the crisis, this brief summarizes the evidence to date on how the prediction of a shadow crisis has played out in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).The brief is intended as a call to action for policymakers, since available research sets off multiple alarm bells. It also proposes urgent policy responses. Evidence to date confirms that the COVID-19 crisis has had profound negative impacts on the education, health, employment and empowerment of girls and women including in SSA. Available data is still limited, but what is known to date suggests that we are seeing the tip of an iceberg. Many impacts will have long term repercussions for girls’ and women’s human capital. Decision makers are at a pivotal moment to invest now in women and girls, to neutralize immediate but also prolonged costs to individuals, societies and economies.

This article focuses on Israeli single gay fathers, using the Stress Process Model (SPM) as a framework to investigate their fathering experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thematic analysis of 15 in-depth semi-structured interviews with Israeli single gay fathers during the third national lockdown revealed that their parenting experiences during the pandemic were shaped by both COVID-related stress exposure and interpersonal resources, which the fathers viewed as interactive. These fathers described three main pandemic-specific stressors: financial insecurity and workplace transformation, feelings of loneliness and isolation and health-related fears.

COVID-19 has reaffirmed that in the face of crises, social and economic fall-out is gendered. From the risk of job loss and economic instability to rising care responsibilities and the experience of violence inside the home, gender inequalities have tended to widen during the pandemic (1, 2). While countries focus on health and mortality impacts of the disease, a mounting, damaging gendered social and economic crisis threatens to roll back decades of development progress, exposing the fragility of equality gains. Social protection has been a key policy response to address pandemic-related social and economic crises; however, attention to gender has been insufficient. Less than one in five global social protection measures during COVID-19 has addressed gender, such as supporting women in informal employment, mitigating risks of violence, and confronting the unequal distribution of care work. Policy priorities (see the box) must include closing gendered research gaps in the COVID-19 recovery.

The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately impacted 2SLGBTQ+ youth experiencing homelessness. Little is known about vaccine attitudes and uptake among this population. To address this, the objectives of this study were to explore this group’s COVID-19 vaccine attitudes, and facilitators and barriers impacting vaccine uptake. 2SLGBTQ+ youth experiencing homelessness in the Greater Toronto Area were recruited to participate in online surveys assessing demographic characteristics, mental health, health service use, and COVID-19 vaccine attitudes. Descriptive statistics and statistical tests were used to analyze survey data to explore variables associated with vaccine confidence. Additionally, a select group of youth and frontline workers from youth serving organizations were invited to participate in online one-on-one interviews. An iterative thematic content approach was used to analyze interview data. Quantitative and qualitative data were merged for interpretation by use of a convergent parallel analytical design.

This study examines some of the perceptions amongst Spanish LGBTQ+ youth during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent confinement and lockdown measures, between March and May 2020. During this time, many of these young people were forced to return to their family homes and restrict their social relations. This new situation often exposed them to forms of violence from which there was no escape, with negative consequences for their psychosocial health. The study evaluates the correlations between perceived social support, burdensomeness, thwarted belongingness and the people with whom LGBTQ+ youth lived during confinement. A descriptive and multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and bivariate correlations is used to examine the responses of 394 LGBTQ+ youth, between 17 and 21 years of age, residing in Spain.