Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately impacted parents, though few studies have explored how parents are using online parenting forums to discuss stressors and obtain information and social support during the COVID-19 pandemic. We aimed to elucidate what stressors parents are discussing and seeking information and social support regarding through online Canadian parenting forums during the COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 337 threads focusing on parenting questions and discussions on two popular online forums, BabyCentre Canada and Canadian Parents What to Expect, were analyzed using a qualitative framework analytic approach. Our emergent framework identified three main themes of parental stressors discussed by parents on the forums during COVID-19 (household stressors, child health, parental health), each with associated subthemes. The findings suggest that skills-based online interventions, such as programs grounded in dialectical behavioral therapy that focus on stress management, self-compassion, and supporting child development while managing multiple roles, may be particularly helpful in mitigating stress among this parent population. Further, our findings inform how mental health organizations working with parents could integrate online forums into their pre-existing websites as a means of providing credible information and peer support regarding the themes of stressors identified through our analysis. Future research should evaluate parents’ use of other virtual modalities for seeking health information, parenting advice, or social connection online to ensure that parents have access to credible information through their preferred mediums.
Highlights
-
Parents use online forums to seek and give advice and support or reassurance regarding stressors during COVID-19.
-
Parents identified co-parenting relationships and social health as key stressors during the pandemic.
-
Parents used forums to gather information regarding their child’s health and development during the pandemic.
-
Online modalities have room to be leveraged to offer social connection and co-parenting support to parents.
-
Skills-based online interventions for supporting child development while managing multiple roles, may mitigate parental stress.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Data availability
All data generated or analyzed during this study will be made available upon request to the corresponding author.
References
Achou, B., Boisclair, D., d’Astous, P., Fonseca, R., Glenzer, F., & Michaud, P. C. (2020). Early impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on household finances in Quebec. Canadian Public Policy, 46(S3), S217–S235. https://doi.org/10.3138/cpp.2020-087.
BabyCenter Canada (2021). About BabyCenter Canada. BabyCenter Canada. https://www.babycenter.ca/e1001100/about-babycenter-canada.
Bastiaansen, C., Verspeek, E., & van Bakel, H. (2021). Gender differences in the mitigating effect of co-parenting on parental burnout: the gender dimension applied to COVID-19 restrictions and parental burnout levels. Social Sciences, 10(4), 127 https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci10040127.
Bernhardt, J. M., & Felter, E. M. (2004). Online pediatric information seeking among mothers of young children: results from a qualitative study using focus groups. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 6(1), e7–e7. https://doi.org/10.2196/jmir.6.1.e7.
Braithwaite, S. R., & Fincham, F. D. (2011). Computer-based dissemination: a randomized clinical trial of ePREP using the actor partner interdependence model. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 49(2), 126–131. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2010.11.002.
Canadian Paediatric Society. (2017). Screen time and young children: Promoting health and development in a digital world. Canadian Paediatric Society. https://www.cps.ca/en/documents/position/screen-time-and-young-children.
Canadian Paediatric Society. (2020). Keeping schools open must be a priority for all governments. Advocacy Statement. https://www.cps.ca/uploads/advocacy/2020_Sept_School_Advocacy.pdf.
Chivers, B., Garad, R., Boyle, J., Skouteris, H., Teede, H., & Harrison, C. (2020). Perinatal distress during COVID-19: thematic analysis of an online parenting forum. Journal Of Medical Internet Research, 22(9), e22002 https://doi.org/10.2196/22002.
Chung, G., Lanier, P., & Wong, P. Y. J. (2020). Mediating effects of parental stress on harsh parenting and parent-child relationship during Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in Singapore. Journal of Family Violence,1–12. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-020-00200-1.
Clarke, J., Kipping, R., Chambers, S., Willis, K., Taylor, H., Brophy, R., Hannam, K., Simpson, S. A., & Langford, R. (2021). Impact of COVID-19 restrictions on preschool children’s eating, activity and sleep behaviours: a qualitative study. BMJ Open, 11(10), e051497–e051497. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2021-051497.
Cole, J., Watkins, C., & Kleine, D. (2016). Health advice from internet discussion forums: how bad is dangerous. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 18(1), e4–e4. https://doi.org/10.2196/jmir.5051.
Deater-Deckard, K., & Panneton, R. (2017). Unearthing the developmental and intergenerational dynamics of stress in parent and child functioning. In Parental Stress and Early Child Development (pp. 1–11). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55376-4_1.
Doss, B. D., Cicila, L. N., Georgia, E. J., Roddy, M. K., Nowlan, K. M., Benson, L. A., & Christensen, A. (2016). A randomized controlled trial of the web-based ourrelationship program: effects on relationship and individual functioning. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 84(4), 285–296. https://doi.org/10.1037/ccp0000063.
Edenroth-Cato, F. (2018). Motherhood and highly sensitive children in an online discussion forum. Health, 24(4), 442–458. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363459318812003.
Fang, Y., Luo, J., Boele, M., Windhorst, D., van Grieken, A., & Raat, H. (2022). Parent, child, and situational factors associated with parenting stress: a systematic review. European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-022-02027-1.
Farrell, A. (2018). Accuracy of online discussion forums on common childhood ailments. Journal of the Medical Library Association, 106(4), 455–463. https://doi.org/10.5195/jmla.2018.355.
Fontanesi, L., Marchetti, D., Mazza, C., Di Giandomenico, S., Roma, P., & Verrocchio, M. (2020). The effect of the COVID-19 lockdown on parents: a call to adopt urgent measures. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 12(S1), S79–S81. https://doi.org/10.1037/tra0000672.
Gadermann, A. C., Thomson, K. C., Richardson, C. G., Gagné, M., McAuliffe, C., Hirani, S., & Jenkins, E. (2021). Examining the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on family mental health in Canada: findings from a national cross-sectional study. BMJ Open, 11(1), e042871–e042871. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2020-042871.
Garbe, A., Ogurlu, U., Logan, N., & Cook, P. (2020). Parents’ experiences with remote education during COVID-19 school closures. American Journal of Qualitative Research, 4(3). https://doi.org/10.29333/ajqr/8471.
Goldberg, A. E., McCormick, N., & Virginia, H. (2021). Parenting in a pandemic: work–family arrangements, well‐being, and intimate relationships among adoptive parents. Family Relations, 70(1), 7–25. https://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12528.
Hawkley, L. C., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2010). Loneliness matters: a theoretical and empirical review of consequences and mechanisms. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 40(2), 218–227. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12160-010-9210-8.
Imran, N., Zeshan, M., & Pervaiz, Z. (2020). Mental health considerations for children & adolescents in COVID-19 Pandemic. Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences, 36(S4), S67–S72. https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.36.COVID19-S4.2759.
Jones, J. H., Call, T. A., Wolford, S. N., & McWey, L. M. (2021). Parental stress and child outcomes: the mediating role of family conflict. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 30(3), 746–756. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-021-01904-8.
Kirk, S., & Milnes, L. (2016). An exploration of how young people and parents use online support in the context of living with cystic fibrosis. Health Expectations: an International Journal of Public Participation in Health Care and Health Policy, 19(2), 309–321. https://doi.org/10.1111/hex.12352.
Lebron, C. N., St. George, S. M., Eckembrecher, D. G., & Alvarez, L. M. (2020). “Am I doing this wrong?” Breastfeeding mothers’ use of an online forum. Maternal and Child Nutrition, 16(1), e12890–e12890. https://doi.org/10.1111/mcn.12890.
Lindström, C., Åman, J., & Norberg, A. L. (2011). Parental burnout in relation to sociodemographic, psychosocial and personality factors as well as disease duration and glycaemic control in children with Type 1 diabetes mellitus: parental burnout in relation to psychosocial, personality and medical factors in childhood diabetes. Acta Pædiatrica (Oslo), 100(7), 1011–1017. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1651-2227.2011.02198.x.
Luciano, A., Nicholson, J., & Meara, E. (2014). The economic status of parents with serious mental illness in the United States. Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal, 37(3), 242–250. https://doi.org/10.1037/prj0000087.
Manning, C., & Gregoire, A. (2009). Effects of parental mental illness on children. Psychiatry (Abingdon, England), 8(1), 7–9. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mppsy.2008.10.012.
Marchetti, D., Fontanesi, L., Di Giandomenico, S., Mazza, C., Roma, P., & Verrocchio, M. C. (2020). The effect of parent psychological distress on child hyperactivity/inattention during the COVID-19 lockdown: testing the mediation of parent verbal hostility and child emotional symptoms. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 567052–567052. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.567052.
Newton, P., & Cullinane, S. (2020). Canadians encouraged to stay home as second wave of Covid-19 worsens. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/08/health/canada-coronavirus-second-wave/index.html.
Patrick, S. W., Henkhaus, L. E., Zickafoose, J. S., Lovell, K., Halvorson, A., Loch, S., Letterie, M., & Davis, M. M. (2020). Well-being of parents and children during the COVID-19 pandemic: a national survey. Pediatrics (Evanston), 146(4), e2020016824 https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2020-016824.
Plantin, L., & Daneback, K. (2009). Parenthood, information and support on the internet. A literature review of research on parents and professionals online. BMC Family Practice, 10(1), 34–34. https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2296-10-34.
Racine, N., Hetherington, E., McArthur, B. A., McDonald, S., Edwards, S., Tough, S., & Madigan, S. (2021). Maternal depressive and anxiety symptoms before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada: a longitudinal analysis. The Lancet. Psychiatry, 8(5), 405–415. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2215-0366(21)00074-2.
Ritchie, J., & Spencer, L. (2002). Qualitative data analysis for applied policy research. In Huberman, A. M. & Miles, M. B. (Eds.), The Qualitative Researcher’s Companion. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp. 305–329. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412986274.
Sebelefsky, C., Karner, D., Voitl, J., Klein, F., Voitl, P., & Böck, A. (2015). Internet health seeking behaviour of parents attending a general paediatric outpatient clinic: a cross-sectional observational study. Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare, 21(7), 400–407. https://doi.org/10.1177/1357633X15583431.
Suffren, S., Dubois-Comtois, K., Lemelin, J.-P., St-Laurent, D., & Milot, T. (2021). Relations between child and parent fears and changes in family functioning related to COVID-19. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(4), 1786 https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18041786.
Thorell, L. B., Skoglund, C., de la Peña, A. G., Baeyens, D., Fuermaier, A. B. M., Groom, M. J., Mammarella, I. C., van der Oord, S., van den Hoofdakker, B. J., Luman, M., de Miranda, D. M., Siu, A. F. Y., Steinmayr, R., Idrees, I., Soares, L. S., Sörlin, M., Luque, J. L., Moscardino, U. M., Roch, M., … Christiansen, H. (2021). Parental experiences of homeschooling during the COVID-19 pandemic: differences between seven European countries and between children with and without mental health conditions. European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-020-01706-1.
Tracy, S. J. (2010). Qualitative quality: eight “big-tent” criteria for excellent qualitative research. Qualitative Inquiry, 16(10), 837–851. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800410383121.
Turnbull, S. (2020). Canada “very well might be” starting its second wave of COVID-19, doctor says. CTV News. https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/canada-very-well-might-be-starting-its-second-wave-of-covid-19-doctor-says-1.5105105.
Walker, S. K., Dworkin, J., & Connell, J. (2011). Variation in parent use of information and communications technology: does quantity matter? Family and Consumer Sciences Research Journal, 40(2), 106–119. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1552-3934.2011.02098.x.
Weaver, J. L., & Swank, J. M. (2021). Parents’ lived experiences with the COVID-19 pandemic. The Family Journal (Alexandria, Va.), 29(2), 136–142. https://doi.org/10.1177/1066480720969194.
Westrupp, E. M., Bennett, C., Berkowitz, T., Youssef, G. J., Toumbourou, J. W., Tucker, R., Andrews, F. J., Evans, S., Teague, S. J., Karantzas, G. C., Melvin, G. M., Olsson, C., Macdonald, J. A., Greenwood, C. J., Mikocka-Walus, A., Hutchinson, D., Fuller-Tyszkiewicz, M., Stokes, M. A., Olive, L., & Sciberras, E. (2021). Child, parent, and family mental health and functioning in Australia during COVID-19: comparison to pre-pandemic data. European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-021-01861-z.
What to Expect. (2021). Canadian parents. What to Expect. https://community.whattoexpect.com/forums/canadian-parents.html.
World Health Organization. (2020). Coronavirus. World Health Organization. https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019.
Wu, Q., & Xu, Y. (2020). Parenting stress and risk of child maltreatment during the COVID-19 pandemic: a family stress theory-informed perspective. Developmental Child Welfare, 2(3), 180–196. https://doi.org/10.1177/2516103220967937.
Author Contributions
All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Shayna K. Pierce, Heidi de Castro Lima, and Barbie Jain. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Shayna K. Pierce and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Funding
This work was generously supported by Research Manitoba (L.R.).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of Interest
The authors declare no competing interests.
Ethics Approval and Informed Consent
All forum threads included in this study are in the public domain, and as such, the need for research ethics board approval and informed consent were waived by the local Ethics Committee of University of Manitoba. All personal identifiers have been removed or disguised so that the person(s) described are not identifiable and cannot be identified through the details of the quotes.
Additional information
Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Pierce, S.K., de Castro Lima, H.L., Jain, B. et al. “Please, please not another lockdown - I can’t do it again.” The Stressors Discussed on Online Canadian Forums by Parents of Young Children During the COVID-19 Pandemic. J Child Fam Stud 32, 3653–3665 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-023-02628-7
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-023-02628-7