Subjektive Belastung der Eltern durch die Beschulung ihrer Kinder zu Hause zu Zeiten des Corona-bedingten Lockdowns im Frühjahr 2020

The Corona-related school closures and the closure of childcare facilities in April and May 2020 meant an immense challenge for many parents. Suddenly, children had to be looked after and educated at home all day. In this paper, we address the question of the subjective burden that parents faced when schooling their children at home. In doing so, we pay special attention to the individual resources of the parents as well as to their family situation and their working life. In particular, we examine the subjective perception of stress of single parents. For our analyses we use data from the SOEP-CoV study, a special survey of the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) on the topic of Corona. Overall, we found moderate levels of stress from the demands of schooling their children at home among all parents surveyed (N = 1508, of which N = 243 were single parents). However, parents with a low level of education and single parents felt particularly burdened, especially if they were employed at the time of the school closures. Our analyses suggest that precisely these groups of parents had problems comprehensively meeting the demands of home schooling under the given circumstances.