Characteristics of Parents Who Spent Time Away from Home During Stay-at-Home Orders and Relation to Parenting Behaviors in Ohio

During the COVID-19 pandemic, stay-at-home (SAH) orders were instituted to limit geographic movement of the population and decrease the spread of the virus. Parents made decisions about how to keep themselves and their children safe which may have led to differing compliance with SAH orders and affected parenting.

We assessed characteristics of those more likely to spend time outside the home and how time spent outside the home was related to parental use of discipline behaviors.

We conducted a 14-day Ecological Momentary Assessment (gEMA) during April–May 2020 in a convenience sample 245 parents with children 2–12 years old in Ohio. Participants completed the EMA three times a day on stress and parenting behaviors. Geotracking during the 14 days was used to calculate time spent away from home. Data were analyzed using multilevel models.

The more social distancing in a neighborhood, the less time a parent spent outside the home. Parents who spent more time away from home had lower odds of using punitive and non-punitive parenting on that day. At-the-moment stress was related to higher odds of using punitive and non-punitive parenting.

The response to COVID no longer includes SAH orders; yet this work allowed us to begin to disentangle types of environmental stress and in what ecological systems this stress may affect parenting. Factors in the microsystem, including stress due to daily hassles, were more likely to be related to immediate parenting behaviors than stressors in the exosystem or macrosystem.