Background
Since the beginning of 2020, public life in many areas around the world was largely determined by the spread of the novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2). Governments around the globe used various restrictions like school closures or contact restrictions to decelerate the growth of COVID-19 cases [
1]. These restrictions were effective to mitigate the spread of the virus [
2,
3], however also affect mental health and well-being. During the pandemic, a reduced quality of life [
4‐
6], an increase in mental health problems [
7‐
10], as well as higher levels of stress and distress [
7,
11,
12] were shown. Taken together, research has broadly shown the various negative consequences of the COVID-pandemic, especially concerning mental health.
Restrictions to prevent the spread of the virus, even if established for the whole population, have varying impact on different subpopulations; as such measures like school and childcare facilities closures have been impacting foremost families. Families and parents have reported various family-specific stressors during the pandemic as an uncertainty about the situation, inability to meet friends and family, loss of daily structures [
13], closed childcare institutions, homeschooling, working from home [
14], balancing childcare and work duties [
15], and not being able to participate in social activities [
16]. On the other hand, the pandemic augmented some protective factors like fewer obligations, more time for family [
13], and more outdoor activities [
15]. However and unsurprisingly in light of the increased amounts of pandemic-related stressors in families [
11], studies have shown higher rates of parental stress across countries [
17] and increased rates of parental burnout [
18]. Summarizing, studies describe changes in daily functioning, specific pandemic-related stressors, and consequently higher levels of stress for families during the pandemic.
Importantly, not all families have been affected equally and different factors have been shown to increase or decrease the risk for pandemic-related burdens for families. As such, higher levels of parental stress during the pandemic have been reported in families with higher number of children in the household [
19], younger parental age [
20], older child age [
21], in single-parent families, and having a child with pre-existing disorders [
22]. Compared to fathers, mothers tended to have higher levels of burnout and a stronger decrease in life satisfaction [
17], as well as increased levels of stress [
16,
18,
19]. Additionally, parental working conditions are important determinants; parental stress has been reported to be higher when the parental work structure has changed since the beginning of the pandemic [
22] and increased to parental unemployed and economic pressure [
23]. Moreover, lower educational level of parents was shown to be associated with increased stress levels [
23]. Besides these structural and work-related factors, parental mental health and psychological factors were demonstrated to have additional influence. As such, higher parental stress during the pandemic has been associated with depressive symptoms in parents [
24,
25], symptoms of anxiety [
24,
26], less social support [
24], and parental stressful life events [
27]. Together, studies have shown associations of different structural and working-related factors as well as mental health of parents to increased parental stress during the pandemic.
Parental stress is well-known to impact family dynamics and functioning—more so during times of pandemic. Unsurprisingly studies have thus shown the parent—child relationship to suffer with increasing levels of stress [
20], also harsh parenting was shown to increase [
20], just as anger towards children [
24]. This is important to acknowledge, as increased levels of parental stress during the pandemic coincide with a higher potential of child abuse [
25]. Next to this, parental stress was associated to higher behavioral problems of children [
28] and an increase in parental stress in families coincides with an increase of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) [
12]. Concerns around child protection were broadly articulated during the pandemic [
29], but findings across studies are highly heterogeneous [
30,
31]. As such, partly increased [
32‐
35] and partly decreased [
36‐
42] rates of child maltreatment have been reported. Besides these official statistics, studies which directly interview families and parents and that incorporate data from different sources are scarce. The few existing studies show about 2–20% of parents to report increases in using spanking or hitting their children [
43,
44]. Studies also show an increased frequency of physical violence against children [
44]. Physical violence seems to be associated with parental depression [
45,
46], job loss coping [
45], employment change, lower income and increased use of discipline with depression and social isolation [
46]. Together, due to the heterogenous findings, systematic research about violence during the pandemic is needed [
47]. Considering the relevance of parental stress for the risk of physical violence, it is important to investigate parental stress, changes in parental stress and influencing factors on parental stress during the pandemic in order to prevent the use of physical violence against children and it`s severe long-term consequences. While in Germany, the lockdown took place mainly during a very early phase of the pandemic (March–May 2020) and during winter 20/21 (November 2020–April 2021), the consequences of these measures have not ended with relaxation of measures. In contrast, mental health problems in children have even continued to increase between the first lockdown in spring 2020 and the second lockdown in winter 20/21, and remained on a stable high level until autumn 2021 [
48]. School closures took mainly place in the above mentioned phases of lockdown during spring 2020 and in the beginning of 2021. Although varying between the different federal states of Germany, all in all, Germany was the country with the second most frequent school closures in Europe [
49].
Within this study, we aimed to investigate parental stress and changes in parental stress since the beginning of the pandemic in a subsample of a German population-representative sample with children under the age of 18 in summer/autumn 21. Moreover, addressing the close link between parental stress and physical violence, we aimed to assess the interplay between parental stress and the use of physical violence against children during the pandemic and associated influencing factors in order to identify high-risk families. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study focusing on parental stress and changes in parental stress as well as influencing factors at this later stage of the pandemic. Thus, our analyses have rather an exploratory character.
Discussion
In this study, we aimed to investigate parental stress and changes in parental stress during the fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany. Furthermore, addressing the close link between parental stress and physical violence, we aimed to assess the interplay between parental stress and the use of physical violence against children during the pandemic and associated risk factors to identify high-risk families. Our study is, to the best of our knowledge, the first study focusing on parental stress and changes in parental stress as well as physical violence against children and influencing factors during the fourth wave of the pandemic in Germany using a large-scaled population-based sample.
Our results show associations between higher parental stress with the use of physical violence against children, having oneself experienced maltreatment in childhood, mental health symptoms, and certain sociodemographic characteristics. Further, our data shows increased parental stress during the pandemic to be associated with female sex, use of physical violence against children and having experienced more maltreatment in childhood.
In our sample, parents who have ever used physical violence against their children have been characterized by higher parental stress levels, a stronger increase in parental stress during the pandemic, own maltreatment experience during childhood, mental health symptoms and sociodemographic characteristics. Parents who have reported to have used more violence during the pandemic have been characterized by higher parental stress levels, a stronger increase of parental stress during the pandemic, a higher risk of having pre-existing psychiatric disorders, and own maltreatment experience in childhood.
In our sample, the mean parental stress was higher compared to a similar population representative sample during a slightly earlier stage of the pandemic [
57]. Although not very comparable as in the study by Kölch and colleagues, the PSS was used with only 17 instead of 18 items, this may point towards a decrease in PSS with relaxations of Corona restrictions, which co-occurs with an improvement in quality of life from earlier to later stages of the pandemic [
58]. Concerning changes in parental stress during the pandemic, we observed a slight increase in parental stress on average compared to before the pandemic. This underlines that although there might have been some positive aspects of the pandemic for families, overall, the negative effects outweigh the positive ones, and parents describe themselves to be more stressed during the pandemic compared than before.
Even though about 70% of parents who have ever used physical violence against their children have reported a decrease or no change during the pandemic, about 16% have reported an increase in the use of physical violence. This is in line with previous research, which observed increases between 2 and 20%, depending on the form of physical violence [
43]. These results show that there is a small group of children at higher risk for enduring more physical violence during the pandemic. Reconsidering the various negative consequences of physical violence [
59‐
61] this percentage, even if small, is of utmost importance and needs to be characterized better to provide targeted support for these high-risk families.
In our sample, higher levels of parental stress were associated with physical violence against children. Parents reporting to have used more physical violence during the pandemic were characterized by higher parental stress and a stronger increase of parental stress during the pandemic. These findings are in line with recent literature [
20,
62,
63], confirming close associations between parental stress and physical violence against children. Stress can affect parental resources, heighten negative coping strategies and increase the risk for parents to vent their negative emotions through e.g. physical violence [
64]. Moreover, parents who experience high stress are more likely to have lower parental sensitivity [
65,
66], which is linked to child maltreatment [
66].
Our data show associations between higher parental stress and depressive symptoms as well as symptoms of anxiety. This link has been shown by others for the time before [
67,
68] and during the pandemic [
24‐
26]. Mental health symptoms can go along with emotional instability, making caregiving more difficult. Parents can have difficulties meeting the needs of the child adequately, increasing the risk of neglect and maltreatment [
69]. Furthermore, in line with others [
45,
46], higher mental health symptoms were associated with the use of physical violence against children during the pandemic. One explanation could be, that with increased mental health symptoms, especially depressive symptoms, more conflicts in the parent–child relationship can arise [
70], increasing the risk for physical violence. However, contrary to the literature [
46], mental health symptoms were not associated with changes in parental stress and changes in physical violence since the beginning of the pandemic. This is interesting and should be point of further research.
Similarly, pre-existing somatic and psychiatric disorders showed, contrary to others [
24], no association to parental stress, and changes in parental stress during the pandemic. One explanation may be that in our analyses, with depressive and anxiety symptoms, the most common disorders are included separately therefore drawing too much variance in the model. However, parents who have ever used physical violence against their children and parents with an increase in the use of physical violence against children had a higher risk of having pre-existing mental disorders. This is in line with others, showing the increased risk for maltreatment in parents with psychiatric disorders [
71‐
73]. Here, moderation and mediation analysis to explore the associations of parental stress, mental health and physical violence could be interesting for future research.
Having experienced more maltreatment during parent’s own childhood was associated with higher levels of parental stress, an increase of parental stress during the pandemic, the use of physical violence against children and an increased use of physical violence during the pandemic. Concerning parental stress, this association has been shown in other research before [
74,
75] and during the pandemic [
27]. Lotto et al. [
74] confirm in their review close associations between on the one hand childhood adversities and parental stress and on the other hand between childhood adversities and later negative parenting. Other research [
75] underlines our results regarding a dose–response relationship between the experience of own childhood maltreatment and parental stress. Concerning the use of physical violence against children, our results are in line with previous research [
76,
77] showing an association between parental childhood adversities and positive attitudes towards corporal punishment. Taken together, own maltreatment experiences in childhood seem to be an important risk factor for higher parental stress, use of physical violence against children and not being able to cope well with the challenges of the pandemic. Future research could examine these relationships in greater detail, if parental stress could be a mediator to (partly) explain the relationship between own maltreatment experiences in childhood and use of physical violence against children.
In our data, sex was not associated with parental stress levels, suggesting that mothers and fathers may be equally stressed at this stage of the pandemic. This contrasts previous research [
23,
24], but may be explained by the different stages of the pandemic. While other studies took place during an early stage of the pandemic, our study took place at a quite late stage of the pandemic, where schools and childcare facilities have reopened [
78]. Concerning changes in parental stress during pandemic, in our sample, women reported a stronger increase in parental stress compared to men. This underlines, however, the often-described higher burden for women, especially for mothers, during the pandemic [
5,
8,
79‐
81].
In contrast to others [
23,
82] employment and income were not associated with parental stress, changes in parental stress and an increase of physical violence against children during the pandemic in our sample. This is surprising, as economic hardship is a well-known stressor in families, numerously shown to be associated with parental stress levels and physical violence against children [
64,
83]. Also, in our data, having ever used physical violence against children was associated with a higher risk of having an income under the poverty level, in line with others [
46].
Living in a relationship with the father/mother of the youngest child showed to be a protective factor against higher stress levels, but not for changes in parental stress, use of physical violence or increase in use of violence during the pandemic. While previous studies [
22] often investigated the difference between single-parents and parents in a relationship, our study only asked if the parent is living in a relationship with the father/mother of the youngest child, but not if the parent is in a relationship. This may explain the seen differences.
In contrast to other studies [
21,
22,
84], but in line with some [
83], in our sample, younger age of the child was associated with higher parental stress. In our data, no association regarding age of the first child and pandemic-associated change in parental stress was seen. This could be due to more care and custody duties of parents with younger children. However, in our study, only the age of the first child was considered, existence and age of siblings was not included into analyses. This may limit the validity of our results. Future research could investigate different age groups, e.g., elementary students needing increased support with homeschooling. For example, de Oliveira et al. [
85] found two age groups (2–9 and 14–18 years), which are at risk of being victims of violence during the pandemic.
Work-related changes of the parents were not associated with changes in physical violence against children or parental stress. This is in contrast to previous research [
22]. Potentially, as our study was conducted during a late stage of the pandemic, working conditions already had normalized again or employees already have adapted to the new situation.
Strengths and limitations
A strength of this study is that a subsample of a large-scaled, population-based study was used, strengthening the generalizability of our results. Besides, we have used a well-established measure with a wide variance to investigate parental stress and changes in parental stress. On top, we have included many sociodemographic and psychological variables, mental health problems as well as pandemic-related variables like changes in working conditions. However, there are some limitations to consider. In our study, only self-reporting measures were used. These could have been influenced by social desirability, especially when investigating topics like use of physical violence against children. Concerning changes in physical violence this change was estimated by the participants themselves based on one single question. Therefore, potential bias in this subjective estimate might be possible. Future research should investigate this with a more objective measure. On the other hand, these sensitive questions were not asked face-to-face but, in a questionnaire guaranteeing more privacy. Moreover, samples size varied strongly between analyses and for some analyses, sample size was very low. In our study, a cross-sectional design was used, thus, no causality can be concluded. Concerning changes in parental stress, we measure a retrospective recall of these changes. With this operationalization, we cannot capture the fluctuating stress over-time. Future research should therefore capture these changes with longitudinal designs, enabling to compare different stages of the pandemic. Baseline measures are missing. Besides, due to the rather exploratory character of our analyses, we have focused on variables based on our literature research in order to avoid inclusion of too many variables and potential overlapping. However, there are many more possible influencing factors, in particular addressing pandemic-specific information, which weren´t included in our analysis and should be point of further research. Besides these limitations, our study provides important insights in parental stress during the pandemic and characteristics of parents who use physical violence against children during the pandemic in a large population-representative sample in Germany.
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