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Who Is Watching the Children? A Quantitative Analysis of Strategies for Reconciling Work and Parenting during Lockdown in Northern Italy

(1) Background: In their efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19, most countries closed schools and kindergartens. To date, little is known about the strategies of working families reconciling work and parenting during repeated lockdown situations. (2) Methods: We performed a quantitative survey o...

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Autores principales: Plagg, Barbara, Flarer, Heidi, Conca, Andreas, Wiedermann, Christian J., Engl, Adolf, Piccoliori, Giuliano, Mairhofer, Sigrid, Barbieri, Verena, Eisendle, Klaus
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8583403/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34769693
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph182111174
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author Plagg, Barbara
Flarer, Heidi
Conca, Andreas
Wiedermann, Christian J.
Engl, Adolf
Piccoliori, Giuliano
Mairhofer, Sigrid
Barbieri, Verena
Eisendle, Klaus
author_facet Plagg, Barbara
Flarer, Heidi
Conca, Andreas
Wiedermann, Christian J.
Engl, Adolf
Piccoliori, Giuliano
Mairhofer, Sigrid
Barbieri, Verena
Eisendle, Klaus
author_sort Plagg, Barbara
collection PubMed
description (1) Background: In their efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19, most countries closed schools and kindergartens. To date, little is known about the strategies of working families reconciling work and parenting during repeated lockdown situations. (2) Methods: We performed a quantitative survey of working parents in Italy during a week of ‘hard lockdown’ in February/March 2021. (3) Results: 3725 voluntary adult participants from different households responded. Though officially not allowed, 53.4% of all participants sought help from people outside the nuclear family to bridge the situation, mostly the grandparents (79%; n = 1855). Overall, parental coping strategies included alternating working–childcare-turns with their partner (35%, n = 1316), working early in the morning or during nighttime (23%; n = 850), or leaving the children unattended (25%, n = 929). (4) Conclusions: The closure of schools/kindergartens forcefully shifts the responsibility for childcare onto the nuclear family, where new strategies arose, including health-damaging models of alternating work–childcare-shifts, ‘illegal’ involvement of third parties from outside the nuclear family, as well as neglect of age-related childcare. Our findings underline that working families need additional support strategies during repeated closure of childcare institutions to be able to reduce contact and minimize secondary damage.
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spelling pubmed-85834032021-11-12 Who Is Watching the Children? A Quantitative Analysis of Strategies for Reconciling Work and Parenting during Lockdown in Northern Italy Plagg, Barbara Flarer, Heidi Conca, Andreas Wiedermann, Christian J. Engl, Adolf Piccoliori, Giuliano Mairhofer, Sigrid Barbieri, Verena Eisendle, Klaus Int J Environ Res Public Health Article (1) Background: In their efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19, most countries closed schools and kindergartens. To date, little is known about the strategies of working families reconciling work and parenting during repeated lockdown situations. (2) Methods: We performed a quantitative survey of working parents in Italy during a week of ‘hard lockdown’ in February/March 2021. (3) Results: 3725 voluntary adult participants from different households responded. Though officially not allowed, 53.4% of all participants sought help from people outside the nuclear family to bridge the situation, mostly the grandparents (79%; n = 1855). Overall, parental coping strategies included alternating working–childcare-turns with their partner (35%, n = 1316), working early in the morning or during nighttime (23%; n = 850), or leaving the children unattended (25%, n = 929). (4) Conclusions: The closure of schools/kindergartens forcefully shifts the responsibility for childcare onto the nuclear family, where new strategies arose, including health-damaging models of alternating work–childcare-shifts, ‘illegal’ involvement of third parties from outside the nuclear family, as well as neglect of age-related childcare. Our findings underline that working families need additional support strategies during repeated closure of childcare institutions to be able to reduce contact and minimize secondary damage. MDPI 2021-10-24 /pmc/articles/PMC8583403/ /pubmed/34769693 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph182111174 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Plagg, Barbara
Flarer, Heidi
Conca, Andreas
Wiedermann, Christian J.
Engl, Adolf
Piccoliori, Giuliano
Mairhofer, Sigrid
Barbieri, Verena
Eisendle, Klaus
Who Is Watching the Children? A Quantitative Analysis of Strategies for Reconciling Work and Parenting during Lockdown in Northern Italy
title Who Is Watching the Children? A Quantitative Analysis of Strategies for Reconciling Work and Parenting during Lockdown in Northern Italy
title_full Who Is Watching the Children? A Quantitative Analysis of Strategies for Reconciling Work and Parenting during Lockdown in Northern Italy
title_fullStr Who Is Watching the Children? A Quantitative Analysis of Strategies for Reconciling Work and Parenting during Lockdown in Northern Italy
title_full_unstemmed Who Is Watching the Children? A Quantitative Analysis of Strategies for Reconciling Work and Parenting during Lockdown in Northern Italy
title_short Who Is Watching the Children? A Quantitative Analysis of Strategies for Reconciling Work and Parenting during Lockdown in Northern Italy
title_sort who is watching the children? a quantitative analysis of strategies for reconciling work and parenting during lockdown in northern italy
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8583403/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34769693
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph182111174
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