Parental Stress and the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Homeschooling is a historically successful modality of education in a home setting with a parent acting as the primary instructor. Typically, the parents are mentally and physically prepared to transition into a teaching role because they have willingly chosen this route. Amid the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic, however, parents have been forced to homeschool their children. For this reason, we think it is important to (a) identify stress levels in parents associated with having a "school at home" option chosen for them (b) evaluate certain factors that increase parental stress in parents who are homeschooling their children because of the pandemic, and (c) to ask about their perception of their child's learning and behavior. This should maintain the suspected correlation between parental stress and academic outcomes in children, which will explain the presumed future educational consequences of the pandemic on children. We hope to clarify that homeschooling is not detrimental to child learning; however, homeschooling with high stress and inadequate preparation may be.