Under the Same Roof, for Better and for Worse

Households with young children are experiencing both increased
conflict and high levels of closeness during the pandemic.

When social distancing measures went into effect and schools and childcare closed, many American adults and children found themselves suddenly cooped up inside their homes, and unable to engage in everyday activities such as going to work, shopping, going out to eat, playing sports, or going to the movies.

In addition to families spending increased time under the same roof, concerns have been expressed about elevated stress, anxiety, and depression associated with the pandemic. Indeed, in prior posts from our own weekly surveys, we noted that in addition to increases in adult mental health difficulties, child behavior problems have also increased significantly since the pandemic began.

More time together and diminished adult/child well-being, without typical social outlets, could lead to elevated levels of family conflict.

This is especially troublesome for infants and young children for three reasons:

1. Chronically elevated levels of stress are not good for young brains.
2. The child protection system that is ordinarily in place via legal mandates for educators, health care professionals, and others to report child mistreatment to the authorities has largely been rendered inoperable during the pandemic.
3. Additional social systems of support that often attenuate child maltreatment have been diminished (e.g., income from employment, regular nutrition at schools, family support services, etc.).

Notably, although concerns about increased family conflict during the pandemic have been raised in the media, there have been few if any reports based on scientific data on actual changes in rates of family conflict. Nor is it clear whether the pandemic is affecting the bonds among family members, leading to decreased levels of warmth and affection that parents feel towards their children. (It is important to point out that conflict and affection are not necessarily at opposite ends of a single continuum — it is possible in relationships for conflict and affection to be simultaneously high or low).

In this week’s post, we report that average family conflict rates have, indeed, significantly increased from pre-pandemic levels across families in our RAPID survey sample. The magnitude of these increases is the same across families, regardless of race and ethnicity or income level.

However, what is markedly different across household income levels is what parents and other caregivers report would be most likely to reduce conflict.

When asked about reducing family conflict, families in lower-income households are significantly more likely to suggest financial relief than to suggest regaining social and emotional supports.

In middle/upper-income households, the pattern is reversed. Significantly more parents cite social and emotional supports than financial relief as a way of reducing conflict.

There is also a more optimistic finding across the sample.

Parental reports of affection towards their child have remained high and appear unaffected by the pandemic.

The data show increases in family conflict regardless of income level or race/ethnicity

To measure family conflict, we selected 10 questions from the Conflict Tactics Scales, a set of questions that has been used extensively by researchers. We used these questions to compute three scores: a spousal conflict score, a parent-child conflict score, and a total conflict score (a sum of all items). We asked survey participants to reflect on these topics both before the pandemic and now.

Spousal conflict, parent-child conflict and overall conflict have all increased significantly since before pandemic.

Each of these findings was very strong.

We also found that there were no differences in the magnitude of increases in conflict based on race, ethnicity or household income.

Differences in what families say would reduce family conflict

We asked families and caregivers in the survey to think about what would help decrease conflict in their family the most right now. Here, there was an important difference between families of different income levels.

In lower-income households, over half of participants (54%) indicated that financial supports would be most helpful in reducing conflict, whereas in upper and middle households the proportion indicating that financial supports would be most helpful was significantly less (36%).

The single area of financial support that lower-income participants indicated would be most helpful for reducing conflict was knowing they could pay the rent/mortgage/other housing expenses; 32% of lower-income households endorsed this item.

This was more than three times greater than the proportion of middle/upper income households (10%) who endorsed this item.

In contrast to financial supports being most necessary in lower-income households to reduce conflict, more middle/upper-income households than lower-income households indicated that regaining pre-pandemic social/emotional supports and reducing social isolation would be the best way to decrease family conflict (64% in middle and upper-income households vs. 46% in lower-income households).

Parents are reporting that they remain close to their children

We also asked parents and caregivers a set of questions about their feelings of connectedness and warmth towards their children. We asked them to consider when they and their children have spent time together, how often they did the following:

• Let my child know I really care about them.
• Was loving and affectionate toward my child.
• Was supportive and understanding toward my child.
• Told my child I love them.

We found that parents’ positive feelings and actions have remained at pre-pandemic levels.

Responses to questions were on a 1–5 scale, and we found that the average response across all families was virtually unchanged since the start of the pandemic (4.42 before compared to 4.43 at present). The magnitude of change was the same across the entire sample.

What are the implications of these results for family conflict and cohesiveness during the pandemic?

Family conflict is cause for concern when it comes to child well-being.

Especially early in life, when a child’s brain and other bodily systems are undergoing rapid development, intense, on-going family conflict can leave a lasting legacy.

For example, brains of babies as young as 6–12 months who had high levels of non-physical spousal conflict showed measurable differences from those who had low levels of spousal conflict, findings documented in a 2013 study that was conducted by members of our team.

Chronic stressors like significant family and ongoing conflict can also lead to changes in stress hormone levels and immune system functioning, leading to long-term effects on health and wellbeing.

As such, the increased family conflict we observed in our survey is cause for concern, especially if these levels continue to remain elevated as time passes.

The data reveal actionable steps that may be taken to reduce conflict. Some of these, related to reducing social isolation, are already likely occurring as states reopen. With the likelihood of a resurgence of coronavirus cases and the possibility of reinstatement of at least some social distancing measures, though, it is not enough to simply rely on reopening to address social isolation issues.

Other actionable steps—such as financial supports to pay for household needs—will require ongoing direct policy action aimed at assisting lower-income families.

Moreover, for some households, especially high levels of conflict may require additional social services to address.

Although there are numerous programs with documented evidence of effectiveness at reducing conflict, many of these programs were largely on hiatus in recent months and will need to be reinstated.

One cautiously optimistic aspect of this week’s survey is the sustained high levels of warmth and affection expressed by caregivers towards their children since before the pandemic.

There is likely no stronger protection against the negative effects of stress than a close and nurturing relationship with a parent or parent figure.

It is encouraging to see that parent-child bonds appear to be holding strong during the pandemic, even if there is more conflict occurring.

Recommendations

1. Policy makers should pass legislation that provides financial supports for lower-income households in order to cover the costs of basic needs, especially related to housing, in order to reduce conflict and improve developmental outcomes in these families.
2. Communities should focus on activities, in the context of re-opening, that maximize regaining or establishing new social supports, and minimize isolation. In addition, policy makers and communities should also look ahead to the possibility of the reinstatement of social distancing measures that could be necessary in the future, and be better prepared with prevention strategies to reduce isolation and maintain supports while sheltering in place.
3. Policy makers should implement targeted programs to support the specific needs that families with young children have around conflict. Different households may have different needs with respect to social isolation and lack of social support, financial difficulties, or lack of conflict resolution skills.

In addition to these recommendations related to family conflict, as per our prior posts we also suggest the following additional actions are taken:

1. Adequately finance childcare and shift childcare subsidy payment policies and mechanisms to create stability for childcare providers. Focus childcare stabilization efforts on programs serving lower-income workers (on subsidy and those self-paying) to ensure the availability of child care to these groups so that they can return to or remain in the workforce.
2. Require employers to allow flexible work schedules and additional time off for parents facing challenges at home, including lack of childcare, social isolation and lack of social support, and mental health difficulties among family members.
3. Maintain real-time data and information at the state and community levels on available childcare, social service, and mental health options for families, and increase efforts to make it easier for families to find and locate available, high quality services.

Suggestions for further reading

Our team has curated a selection of important background readings for anyone interested in further exploring the ways conflict affects early child development.

“What Sleeping Babies Hear: an fMRI Study of Interparental Conflict and Infants’ Emotional Processing,” Psychological Science.

“Mental Health and the Covid-19 Pandemic,” The New England Journal of Medicine.

“You and Your Kids Can’t Sand Each Other. Now What?” New York Times.

“How to Address Family Conflict and Your Child’s Behavioral Problems During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” NYU Langone Health NewsHub.

About the project

When the COVID-19 pandemic emerged last winter, there were over 24 million children age five and under living in the United States. This period of early childhood is a critical window that sets the stage for health and well-being across the lifespan. As such, it is essential during the current health and economic crisis to listen to the voices of households with young children.

The weekly survey of households with children age five and under launched on April 6, 2020. Since then, we have been gathering weekly data about child and adult emotional well-being, financial and work circumstances, availability of healthcare, and access to child care/early childhood education.

We will continue to report on these issues as we learn more from each new weekly survey. We will also be producing policy briefs that make concrete recommendations about how to address the challenges we are seeing emerge from the family surveys.

Our goal is to use what we are hearing from families to improve the well-being of all households with young children, during the pandemic and beyond.

Suggested citation

Center for Translational Neuroscience (2020, June 16). Under the same roof, for better and for worse. Medium. https://medium.com/rapid-ec-project/under-the-same-roof-for-better-and-for-worse-af3333d23256