ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic had major implications for private and family lives. The German Family Panel pairfam conducted an online survey regarding the experiences during the pandemic. The survey was conducted from May to July 2020. It includes instruments introduced in previous pairfam waves as well as new modules on topics that proved particularly relevant during the COVID-19 pandemic. The resulting dataset encompasses a sample of 3,182 respondents from all German federal states ranging in age from 17-47 years. The data has already been used in a variety of scientific publications and is available for research and teaching purposes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19-pandemic showed largely negative, but heterogeneous effects on the psychological well-being of children and adolescents.The present study aimed to (1) identify differential trajectories of emotional problems as young people entered the pandemic, (2) compare pre-pandemic trends to changes one year after its onset, and (3) analyze sociodemographic and social predictors of trajectories. 555 children and adolescents, aged 7 - 14 years at T1 (M = 10.53 years, 46.5 % female), were interviewed in three waves of the German family panel pairfam. Latent class growth analysis (LCGA) revealed four distinct trajectories of emotional problems: an increase after the onset of COVID-19 ("Mean increasing"), a decrease ("Mean decreasing"), no change at low level ("Low stable") or at high level ("Chronic high"), each after a stable trajectory before the pandemic.Multinomial logistic regressions showed that females and youth experiencing an increase in financial deprivation were at higher risk of increasing or chronically high level of emotional problems, while sociability proved protective. Migration background and rejection by peers showed mixed effects. The results emphasize the importance of a differential perspective on how the COVID-19-pandemic affected children's and adolescents' well-being. Besides negative consequences for vulnerable groups, also beneficial aspects of the pandemic should be considered.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Humans , Adolescent , Child , Female , Male , Pandemics , Emotions , Peer Group , Psychological Well-BeingABSTRACT
Attaining self-regulation is a major developmental task in infancy, in which many children show transient difficulties. Persistent, clinically relevant difficulties in self-regulation include excessive crying or sleeping disorders. Many families with affected children are burdened with multiple psychosocial risk. This suggests that regulatory problems are best conceptualized as the maladaptive interplay of overly burdened parents and a dysfunctional parent-child interaction. The current study examines whether social isolation and bonding difficulties function as mediating mechanisms linking maternal psychopathology to (1) children's excessive crying and (2) sleeping problems. The sample comprised N = 6598 mothers (M = 31.51 years) of children between zero to three years of age (M = 14.08 months, 50.1% girls). In addition to socio demographic data, the written questionnaire included information on maternal depression/anxiety, isolation, bonding, and children's regulatory problems. Hypotheses were tested with a mediation model controlling for psychosocial risk and child characteristics. As expected, maternal symptoms of depression/anxiety were linked to infants' excessive crying and sleeping problems. Social isolation and bonding difficulties mediated this association for excessive crying as well as for sleeping problems, but social isolation was a single mediator for sleeping problems only. The findings provide important insights in the mediating pathways linking maternal psychopathology to children's regulatory problems.
ABSTRACT
Families have been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated lockdown, but barely any research has been conducted yet, investigating how COVID-19-related stressors - and, specifically, disruptions in established employment arrangements - affected couples' relationship quality. To account more comprehensively for such non-monetary costs of the COVID-19 pandemic, the present study investigates whether changes in partners' employment situation during the COVID-19 crisis - particularly home-office and short-time work - had an immediate impact on the relationship satisfaction of cohabiting married and unmarried couples. To do so, we estimated fixed-effects regression models, exploiting unique data from the German Family Panel (pairfam;wave 11) and its supplementary COVID-19 web-survey. We observed a substantial proportion of respondents experiencing positive (20%) or negative (40%) changes in relationship satisfaction during the crisis. Relationship satisfaction has decreased, on average, for men and women alike, almost irrespective of whether they experienced COVID-19-related changes in their employment situation. While partners' employment situation hardly moderated the negative association between respondents' employment and relationship satisfaction, the presence of children seemed to buffer partly against a COVID-19-related decrease. Our results thus confirm previous findings suggesting that the COVID-19 pandemic constitutes a threat to couples' relationship quality and healthy family functioning more generally.
ABSTRACT
Mit der COVID-19-Pandemie sind Entwicklungsbedarfe in der Ausgestaltung der Zusammenarbeit zwischen Schule und Eltern erneut deutlich geworden. Die Potenziale, die in einer intensiveren Kooperation und einer stärkeren Öffnung von Schulen für Bedarfe von Familien liegen, wurden zwar schon lange zuvor herausgearbeitet, aber noch unzureichend genutzt. Der vorliegende Beitrag stellt hierauf bezogene Empfehlungen des Neunten Familienberichts (BMFSFJ, 2021) vor. Plädiert wird für eine Stärkung schulischer Ressourcen für die Weiterentwicklung von Erziehungs- und Bildungspartnerschaften, für die Anbindung von Angeboten der Elternbildung und -beratung an Schulen und für den Ausbau interdisziplinärer Teams, die in ausgewählten Themenfeldern die Kooperation mit Eltern unterstützen können.Alternate abstract:The Covid-19 pandemic has once again highlighted the need for development in the cooperation between schools and parents. Although the potential for more intensive cooperation and greater openness to the needs of families on the part of schools has been identified long before, it has not yet been fully exploited. This article presents the related recommendations of the Ninth Family Report (BMFSFJ, 2021). It argues in favor of strengthening school resources for the further development of family-school partnerships, for linking parent education and counseling services to schools, and for expanding interdisciplinary teams that can support cooperation with parents in selected subject areas.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has substantially affected young people's social and emotional life. Based on longitudinal data provided by 843 adolescents (57.3% female) of the German Family Panel (pairfam), we investigated effects of extraversion on changes in loneliness and depressiveness between 2018 and 2019 and the first German COVID-19 lockdown in the first half of 2020. Findings of latent change modeling show that highly extraverted adolescents experienced a larger rise in depressiveness, and a third of this total effect was mediated through increases in loneliness. These results contradict previous work evidencing lower depressiveness among extraverted youth and challenge the notion of extraversion as a mere protective factor. Under conditions of restricted access to others, this personality trait may become a burden.