by Sarah R. Horn, PhD Candidate, Department of Psychology
A little over two years ago, the University of Oregon Office of the Provost sent an email regarding the handling of coronavirus concerns. The email, dated March 3, 2020, emphasized there were only three known cases in the state of Oregon. I try to remember those very early days and how I was reacting to the news. I only recall uncertainty. Would this last two weeks or two years? Would I be able to finish my PhD? What does lockdown mean? But mostly, always returning to the same questions: Would I stay healthy? Would those who I loved stay healthy?
The landscape of the world has not stopped transforming and the questions I asked have kept changing, too. It did not take long to witness how the aspects that already divided us—our gender and sex, our race and ethnicity, our income—only deepened under the collective threat of the coronavirus. Celebrities caught flack for skipping town, governors were chastised for flouting safety guidelines, and most Americans could not agree on basic principles. We were all living distinct realities and at the end of day, when the news reels stopped rolling, who was being left behind?
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, my research had focused on the impacts of early life adversity on children’s mental and physical well-being. I studied changes to the immune system as a potential mechanistic pathway linking environmental stress to health consequences. I specialized in working with marginalized families, such as those with Child Welfare System involvement. I was also invested in understanding how parenting and mother-child dynamics influenced these complex relationships. I wanted to know how mothers, and their relationship with their children, could serve as a buffer against a scary world. I wanted to know if mother’s own stress impacted her child, and if so, what could we be doing to support mothers better?
As the pandemic unfolded, it became clear that female caregivers of young children were living a very different pandemic reality. The early stay-at-home guideline regulations helped slow viral spread, but female caregivers shouldered a disproportionate burden as they rapidly adapted to the policies. In April 2020, only a month after the pandemic began to ripple across the US, the United Nations posted a policy brief, highlighting that “across every sphere, from health to the economy, security to social protection, the impacts of COVID-19 are exacerbated for women and girls simply by virtue of their sex.”1 Within five months of that first email from the University, four times as many women as men were dropping out of the work force. The primary reason was lapses in childcare.2 My lab, the Stress Neurobiology and Prevention Lab, conducted surveys of over 7000 households in Oregon. A whopping 90% of households reported that the female caregiver was primarily responsible for overseeing the young children, despite other obligations.3
Initially, there is often a zoomed-out lens on the impact of major public health crises. The early data came out with the same message—the COVID-19 pandemic was disproportionately harder on women and on mothers. Soon, researchers would take a more detailed approach. The pandemic was not necessarily equally harder on all women. Certain women, particularly women of color and those with socioeconomic adversity, were even more unduly impacted. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated all existing disparities, across racial, ethnic, gender, sex, and income domains.
The COVID-19 pandemic was a public health crisis that pinged on all domains of my research.
I knew the final step of my PhD, my dissertation, must focus on the COVID-19 pandemic. I wanted to collect scientific data on how the pandemic was impacting female caregivers and who was the most affected. Specifically, I wanted to revisit a group of mothers and their children I had met earlier in my degree. Prior to the pandemic, I had collaborated on a project that was studying the efficacy of an intervention called Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT). The project was implementing PCIT for mothers and children with known Child Welfare System involvement, with the goals of improving the mother-child relationship, bolstering mother’s parenting efficacy, and improving child behavioral and health outcomes.4 The intervention trial had wrapped up before the pandemic, and I thought we had a unique opportunity to see how these families were doing. The families involved in the original project had higher rates of material hardship and financial insecurity. In addition to socioeconomic disadvantage, they had higher rates of stigma, isolation, mental health problems, and limited resources. I found myself wondering: How were these families doing all these years and one major public health crisis later?
My dissertation project, generously funded by the Center for the Study of Women in Society, sought to elucidate the health impact of the pandemic on female caregivers and their children. I investigated three domains of impact: Social Impact (e.g., reports of isolation and changes to family dynamics), Psychological Impact (e.g., changes to mental health and caregiver stress), and Physical Impact (e.g., changes to inflammation in mother and child). I also endeavored to explore potential individual differences that may aid in determining who has been most impacted thus far, such a history of caregiver adversity.
The study has been completed and we recruited 28 mothers and their children. During study visits, we heard stories of the adversities they have encountered in the last two years, the strength they had found in their families, and the obstacles they were still overcoming. Our survey results show that mothers are endorsing higher levels of chaos in the home and increased child trauma symptoms now compared to prior to the pandemic. I also collected dried blood spots, which will allow us to determine the extent to which child and mother’s inflammation has changed during this time. As we await those lab results, I think towards the next steps in my research and policy implications. Stress during the COVID-19 pandemic is a multifaceted concept that differentially impacts individuals based on a variety of factors. I am most curious about how mother and children’s health, both physical and mental, has been and will continue to be impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr. Anthony Fauci recently made headlines for his claim that we are “out of the pandemic phase."5 Yet, the health consequences of COVID-19 will outlast the fluctuations in infection rates. My sincere hope is that research impacts policy to support women and families, such as increasing access to affordable childcare, support for child education, national paid leave policies, and more.
—Sarah R. Horn received a 2021–22 Graduate Student Research Grant from CSWS.
References
1. United Nations (2020). The impact of COVID-19 on women. United Nations entity for gender equality and the empowerment of women (UN Women). United Nations Secretariat. https://www.unwomen.org/-/media/headquarters/attachments/sections/library/publications/2020/policy-brief-the-impact-of-COVID-19-on-women-en.pdf.
2. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Population Survey, Marital and family labor force statistics, 2019. https://www.bls.gov/cps/ (last accessed April 2022).
3. Center for Translational Neuroscience (2020, July 30). A Hardship Chain Reaction: Financial Difficulties Are Stressing Families’ and Young Children’s Wellbeing during the Pandemic, and It Could Get a Lot Worse. Medium. https://medium.com/rapid-ec-project/ahardship-chain-reaction-3c3f3577b30
4. Nekkanti, A. K., Jeffries, R., Scholtes, C. M., Shimomaeda, L., DeBow, K., Norman Wells, J., ... & Skowron, E. A. (2020). Study Protocol: The Coaching Alternative Parenting Strategies (CAPS) Study of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy in Child Welfare Families. Frontiers in psychiatry, 839.
5. Achenbach, J & Pietsch, B (2022, April 27). U.S. no longer in ‘full-blown’ pandemic phase, Fauci says. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/04/27/pandemic-phase-over-fauci-covid/.