Parenting during a Pandemic: Social Isolation and Risk for Child Maltreatment

Background and Purpose: The Covid-19 pandemic contributed to unprecedented levels of economic strain, as well as social isolation and social distancing, which have great potential to exacerbate risk for child maltreatment. This study examined the association of parental social isolation and recent employment loss to parenting risk behaviors early in the pandemic.

Methods: Data were collected via a survey research firm on March 24, 2020, just 2 weeks after the World Health Organization declared that the Coronavirus was a global health pandemic. Participants (N = 288) were parents in the U.S. with at least one child 0-12 years of age. The primary independent variable was parental perceived social isolation, i.e., the degree to which social isolation/ social distancing makes it difficult to parent. The key dependent variables (physical neglect, emotional neglect, verbal aggression, and physical abuse) were measured by the Parent-Child Conflict Tactics Scales (CTS-PC). The CTS-PC scale was modified to ask about behaviors in the past 2 weeks. Parents were also asked to report whether, since the pandemic, they had increased use of discipline. Data were analyzed in Mplus using logistic regression to obtain log odds (LO) coefficients.

Results: 50% of parents reported that social isolation and social distancing were getting in the way of their parenting. A majority of parents (61%) shouted, yelled, or screamed at their children at least once in the past 2 weeks; 1 in 5 spanked/slapped their children at least once in the past 2 weeks. 25% of parents had more conflicts with their children since the pandemic; 19% had yelled or screamed at their children more often since the pandemic, and 15% had increased discipline since the pandemic.

Multivariate analyses showed that parental social isolation was associated with physical neglect (LO = 0.56, 95% CI= [0.13, 0.99]), emotional neglect (LO = 0.64, 95% CI = [0.30, 0.98]), and verbal aggression (LO = 0.75, 95% CI=[0.39, 1.09]).

Parental social isolation was associated with changes in discipline in the past 2 weeks: more discipline (LO = 0.44, 95% CI=[0.05, 0.82]), more yelling/screaming (LO = 0.68, 95% CI=[0.25, 0.96]), more conflicts with children (LO = 0.68, 95% CI= [0.35, 1.01]), leaving children alone more (LO = 0.83, 95% CI= [0.07, 1.59]), and spanking more (LO = 0.76, 95% CI=[0.02, 1.50]).

Employment loss was associated with emotional neglect (LO = 0.91, 95% CI=[0.20, 1.62]) and physical punishment (LO = 1.33, 95% CI= [0.62, 2.04]). All associations were robust to the inclusion of total days spent social distancing and in “lockdown.”

Conclusions and Implications: The pandemic may contribute to an increase in maltreatment. Because most children are out of school, education personnel will not be able to report maltreatment to child protection. This is troubling because the highest percentage (20.5%) of child maltreatment reports are from education personnel. When children return to school, trauma-informed mental health services may be needed to address the aftereffects of the pandemic. The pandemic underscores the need to build a better safety net that can support families even during a global crisis.