Collaborative Research: Parenting, Housework, Well-being, and the COVID-19 Pandemic

COVID-19大流行极大地改变了美国的家庭生活。本项目研究在疫情期间，父母从事家务劳动和有偿工作的情况发生了怎样的变化，以及哪些因素可能推动了这些变化。它还调查了大流行病对母亲和父亲之间的家庭劳动分工的长期后果，以及大流行病对父母福祉的影响。从大流行的头几个月开始，持续五年，该项目阐明了在COVID-19大流行期间家庭和工作生活的变化。这项研究的见解为决策者提供了更好地满足工作父母和家庭需求的信息。这个项目使用了来自美国伴侣父母样本的纵向调查数据。父母于2020年4月首次接受调查，询问他们在大流行开始前和一个月后的工作和家庭活动情况。这些父母在2020年11月和2021年10月再次接受了调查，每一波都有一组新的受访者。后续调查产生了从2020年3月到2025年9月的六波数据。在研究期间，大约有6500名家长接受了至少一次调查。这些数据用于评估(a)父母家务分工的变化，(b)推动这些变化的因素，(c)对母亲劳动力参与的影响，以及(d)父母幸福感和关系质量的变化。这些数据具有独特的新颖性，可用于评估COVID-19大流行对父母工作和家庭生活及其福祉的长期影响。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically altered family life in the United States. This project studies how parents’ engagement in domestic labor and paid work has changed throughout the pandemic and what factors may be driving these changes. It also investigates long-term consequences of the pandemic for the division of household labor between mothers and fathers, and the impacts of the pandemic on parents’ well-being. Starting in the first months of the pandemic and continuing for five years, this project illuminates how family and work life have changed over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. Insights from this study inform decisionmakers to better meet the needs of working parents and families.This project uses longitudinal survey data from a sample of partnered U.S. parents. Parents were first surveyed in April 2020 and asked about their work and household activities prior to and one month after the pandemic began. These parents were surveyed again in November 2020 and October 2021, along with a new set of respondents at each wave. Follow-up surveys result in six waves of data spanning the period from March 2020 through September 2025. Approximately 6,500 parents are surveyed at least once during the study. These data are used to assess (a) changes in parents’ divisions of domestic labor, (b) the factors driving these changes, (c) effects on mothers’ labor force participation, and (d) changes in parents’ well-being and relationship quality. The novel nature of these data are uniquely situated to assess the long-term consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic for parents’ work and family life and their well-being.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.