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As a result of the abrupt closures of daycare centers in Germany due to the COVID-19 pandemic, parents’ ability to provide learning opportunities at home became all the more important. Building on the family stress model, the study investigates how parental stress affected changes in parents’ provision of home learning activities (HLA) during the lockdown, compared to before the lockdown. In addition, the study considers parental self-efficacy and perceived social support as protective factors that may play important roles in disrupting the negative effects of stress. Data stems from a nation-wide survey of 7,837 German parents of children ages 1–6 years, which was conducted in Spring 2020 during the first wave of COVID-19 infections and at a time of strict restrictions in Germany. Results revealed that parental stress was negatively related to changes in the provision of HLA. Parental self-efficacy and an intact social support system were protective of parental stress during the lockdown. Additionally, parental self-efficacy and – to a larger extend – perceived social support interacted with parental stress in the relation to changes in the provision of HLA. Specifically, self-efficacy and perceived social support acted as protective factors that buffered the negative influence of stress on parents’ ability to provide educational activities for their children at home. These results have important implications for supporting families with young children during challenging times, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the temporary closure of daycare centers.
Die Schließung von Kindertageseinrichtungen (Kita) als Maßnahme zur Eindämmung des Corona-Virus stellte frühpädagogische Fachkräfte kurzfristig vor veränderte Tätigkeitsbedingungen und Möglichkeiten, den weiterhin bestehenden Bildungsauftrag umzusetzen. Die Zusammenarbeit mit Eltern, mit und ohne digitale Medien, spielt in dieser Hinsicht eine wichtige Rolle. Der Beitrag untersucht a) wie häufig und in welcher Form Fachkräfte die Elternzusammenarbeit in der Corona-Schließzeit umsetzten, b) welche Einstellungen frühpädagogische Fachkräfte zu digital-gestützter und allgemeiner Elternzusammenarbeit in der Corona-Schließzeit hatten und c) welche Rolle die Qualifikation der Fachkräfte, ihre Einstellungen und ihre wahrgenommene Unterstützung im Hinblick für die digitale und nicht digitale Elternzusammenarbeit in der Corona-Schließzeit spielten. Datenbasis bildet eine bundesweite Onlinebefragung von 3513 Fachkräften in Kitas während der Corona-Schließzeit. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die wahrgenommene eigene Rolle im Hinblick auf die Elternzusammenarbeit einen positiven Einfluss darauf hat, ob mit den Eltern Kontakt aufgenommen wurde. Ob dieser Kontakt über digitale Medien passiert, hängt unter anderem von den Einstellungen der Fachkräfte zu digitalen Medien, der erwarteten Reaktion der Eltern auf diese Form der Elternzusammenarbeit und von der technischen Unterstützung im Implementationsprozess digitaler Medien in der Elternzusammenarbeit ab. Die Ergebnisse werden in Bezug auf strukturelle Bedingungen von Einrichtungen und professionelle Kompetenzen frühpädagogischer Fachkräfte für eine breite Implementierung digitaler Medien in der frühpädagogischen Praxis diskutiert.
Beginning in March 2020, the lockdown precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in many challenges, especially for families with young children. Many children had little or no access to institutional education. Therefore, they were even more dependent on their parents providing them with home learning activities (HLA) to support their development. We examined the adaptability of families with regard to changes in parents’ provision of HLA in traditional two-parent families, single parent families, and large families compared to before the lockdown. We focused on family resources, such as a supportive distribution of roles within the partnership, or social support, as predicting factors of adaptability in N = 8,513 families with children aged 18–69 months. In addition, we considered parental stress as a further influencing factor. The cross-sectional data depicts families from a nationwide online survey, which we conducted during spring 2020 in Germany. We found that (a) all three family types offered their children more learning activities at home, albeit with slight differences between the families. However, (b) we identified differences in the factors influencing families’ adaptability: Across all family types, we found slight to medium negative relations between adaptability and parental stress. The relations were most evident in large families. Furthermore, social support exhibits somewhat positive relations to the adaptability of large families. For adaptability in single-parent families, gender differences were initially evident. Among single fathers, the change in parental HLA was stronger than among single mothers. However, this relation disappeared when we took parental stress and social support into account. For traditional two-parent families and single parents, our analyses revealed (c) barely significant relations between the investigated predictors and changes in HLA during lockdown. Overall, our study confirms that high stress limits the adaptability of providing HLA in families and that social support mitigates negative relations between stress and the provision of HLA, especially in large families. In order to develop effective and needs-based family support programs, it is therefore important to help parents cope with stress and provide them with low-threshold social support. The extent to which these services need to be adapted to different family types must be surveyed in more depth.
Parental self-efficacy (PSE) is an essential predictor of parenting practices and child development. The content-specificity of PSE is not well understood: Previous studies are based on either measure of general parental self-efficacy or task-specific parental self-efficacy but not measures of both constructs. Thus, we do not know how both constructs are related. With data from the “AQuaFam” study, we compared four-factor models to investigate the structure of PSE. It was a priority whether (1) task-specific and general PSE could be assessed separately or (2) be mapped in a hierarchical model with task-specific PSE factors and a superordinate factor of general PSE. A Chi-square test shows no significant model improvement, which indicates general and task-specific PSE being separate dimensions. US studies suggest that low-income parents, migrants, or parents with a lower educational status experience lower PSE. To adequately support these parents, we need to know whether differences according to families’ background characteristics occur in task-specific and general PSE beliefs. We tested general PSE and PSE in four parenting tasks for differences according to families’ background characteristics. Parents with a university degree they were self-efficacious in communicating responsible media use than parents without a university degree. Parents with a non-German family language they were self-efficacious in communicating a responsible media use, caring for a sick child, and in their general PSE compared to parents with German as a family language. The results of the group differences are discussed in the context of how to support different parent groups.