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This study examined the link between remote learning for children and parent depression during the COVID -19 pandemic. There was an intense shift in how education was delivered during the COVID - 19 outbreak, increasing educational obligations for parents. In this study, two education delivery methods, "any remote learning for the household children" and "any inperson classes, at school, for the household children, " were examined by six measures of parent depression. The NLSY97 COVID-19 Supplement, collected in the first half of 2021, provided the 1,742-person sample. Remote learning for children was closely linked to parents experiencing increased depression, sadness, lack of focus, feeling that everything is an effort, not able to get "going," and restless sleep. Inperson classes, in school, and during the same time, were not linked to higher levels of these parental mental health issues. All tests controlled for general health, whether respondents had been told they had coronavirus, frequency of close contact at work, etc. These results strongly indicate that remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic is closely linked to increased parent depression. Providing mental health services for parents during extended periods of large-scale remote learning particularly during pandemics, should be a priority.
Keywords: Coronavirus, COVID-19, parenting, depression, remote learning, distance learning, NLSY97 COVID-19 Supplement
Introduction
The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak has severely altered society, upending how education is delivered, straining families, and influencing mental health. In most cases, children, young people, and university students were subject to remote learning for extended periods of time. According to the US Census Bureau, approximately 93% of school-aged children experienced some form of remote learning during the COVID-19 outbreak (McElrath, 2020). Numerous studies examined the relationship between depression and remote learning among young people and university students during the time of COVID-19 (Bolatov et al., 2021; Hawrilenko et al., 2021; Li et al., 2021; Liu et al., 2021; Ma et al., 2021; Tang et al., 2020), but the mental health of the parents of children in remote learning has received less attention.
This study sheds light on parent mental health as a response to how education was delivered to children during the COVID-19 pandemic. The link between the learning method provided for children (remote or in-person classes) and parent mental health (depression, sadness,...