Custodial Grandparent’s Job Loss During the COVID-19 Pandemic and Its Relationship with Parenting Stress and Mental Health

BY Qi Wu

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought significant changes to the health, safety, and well-being of many individuals and families. Involuntary job loss during the pandemic adds more challenges, especially for custodial grandparents who are taking care of grandchildren. Custodial grandparents are often older and suffering from physical and mental health problems. They usually experience different stress and challenges, such as economic insecurity, inadequate housing, lack of social support, declining physical health, and the increased parenting stress. In the context of COVID-19, grandparents may be particularly vulnerable to losing their jobs. Based on the family stress theory, given that job loss during the pandemic is a significant stressor for grandparents, how they cope with the stressor depends on their personal characteristics and their social, emotional and financial support.

Our study developed an online survey to collect data from 234 custodial grandparents in June 2020 in the United States. In the present study, we aimed to find out whether experiencing involuntary job loss during the pandemic had any statistical relationship with grandparents’ increased parenting stress and mental health problems. Among all the 234 grandparents who completed the survey, 76 lost their jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic, and 158 grandparents did not. We compared these two groups in terms of the two outcomes: parenting stress and mental health.

Our statistical analysis showed that if grandparents lost their job during the pandemic, they were more likely to report parenting stress than those who did not lose their job, after matching the rest of variables. In addition, our findings showed that grandparents who stepped in due to their child’s substance abuse or economic needs were more likely to report parenting stress than those whose trigger event was child abuse and neglect. White grandparents were more likely to report parenting stress than Hispanic grandparents. Further, grandparents who lost their jobs during the pandemic showed worse mental health outcomes than those who did not. There were several factors that also related to worse mental health outcomes for grandparents, such as being a female, having parenting stress, and having a low level of resilience as well as social support. Our results also showed that if grandparents had high social support, the impacts of job loss on mental health were weaker. If grandparents had low social support, the impacts of job loss on mental health were stronger.

The important takeaway of our study is that grandparents who experienced involuntary job loss during the pandemic were at a higher risk of increased parenting stress and poorer mental health outcomes. However, social support protected against the impact of job loss on grandparents’ mental health problems. To mitigate the effect of involuntary job loss on grandparent-headed families, it is important to provide financial support to kinship families, which could be provided via federal stimulus checks, financial assistance services, universal employee assistance programs, or instrumental support from family members, friends, and community. Additionally, it is essential to strengthen social support and resilience among grandparents by creating peer support groups. Finally, self-care and stress management practices could be beneficial for grandmothers, particularly those who have raised children for more than a year and are experiencing mental distress.

Article details
Custodial Grandparent’s Job Loss During the COVID-19 Pandemic and Its Relationship With Parenting Stress and Mental Health
Qi Wu, Yanfeng Xu & Merav Jedwab
First published online April 17, 2021
DOI: 10.1177/07334648211006222
Journal of Applied Gerontology

About the Author

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Qi Wu is an Assistant Professor at Arizona State University School of Social Work. She holds a doctorate in social work from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Dr. Wu’s research examines the complex factors impinging on child health and well-being, including family dynamics, experiences, and relationships; available services and supports; and aspects of the community and social environment. Her professional and research interests focus on two closely related areas: investigating the risk and protective factors impacting the health and well-being of children and families, and exploring the relationships of various types of out-of-home care, especially kinship care, on child outcomes such as safety, family permanency, and well-being. Dr. Wu has extensive experiences of conducting advanced quantitative data analysis as well as developing intervention research. She has implemented interventions for caregiver/child well-being and secured grants to evaluate the intervention effects. Dr. Wu’s long-term goals include creating sustainable solutions to improve child and family well-being and conducting rigorous evaluation research to develop evidence-based programs that improve child and family outcomes.