Unequal Parenthoods: Population Perspectives on Gender, Race, and Sexual Minority Disparities in Family Stress and Health During Crises

Project Summary The COVID-19 pandemic and the co-occurring period of racial trauma has upended family environments and exacted a toll on parents (mothers in particular), racial and ethnic minorities, and sexual minorities. Understanding how parents functioned during this time is crucial to identifying mechanisms linking race, gender, and sexual identity marginalization to disparities in parental well-being with critical implications for child health. Leveraging novel population-based survey and time diary data collected this past year from the National Couples’ Health and Time Study (NCHAT), we will identify mechanisms underlying gender, racial and ethnic minority, and sexual minority disparities in parenting stress and parental well-being during COVID and this period of intense racial trauma. NCHAT (N = 3,642) is a population-representative study of individuals between 20 and 60 living in same and different-gender couples in the U.S. with oversamples of Black, Latinx, and Asian families and sexual minorities. The study includes 41% of partners as well. The analytic sample for this study focuses on the 35% of the sample that had children under 18 (n = 1,274 main respondents; n = 567 partners). This project has four specific aims: Aim 1. Determine gender, racial and ethnic minority, and sexual minority disparities in parenting stress and well-being and parent-child relationship quality and test marginalization, socioeconomic status, and adverse childhood experiences as mediators; Aim 2. Evaluate COVID and racial trauma stress, psychological distress, and couple relationship functioning as moderators of parenting stress and well-being and parent-child relationship quality disparities; Aim 3. Identify dyadic stress processes in the associations between COVID and racial trauma stress, psychological distress, and relationship functioning and parenting; Aim 4. Examine community disruptions and context as moderators of parenting stress and well-being and parent-child relationship quality disparities. Further, the NCHAT data, the contextual data produced for this project on structural racism, sexism, and heterosexism, and NCHAT survey items for harmonization will be shared with the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Research on COVID-19 Consortium Coordination Center (SBECCC) and the wider health research community, leveraging the exceptional resources of the Institute for Social Research and Data Innovation (ISRDI), home to the IPUMS data projects. Forty percent of NCHAT main respondents identify racial and ethnic minorities, and 45% identify as sexual minorities. Data such as these are crucial to the success and inclusiveness of the SBECCC. This study aligns with the U01’s intention to fund “research to understand the health impacts of coronavirus mitigation strategies and the mechanisms that may convey risk and resilience, particularly in underserved and vulnerable populations, [that] will help improve long-term responses to the pandemic and prepare more effectively for the next public health emergency.” Importantly, understanding family experiences and strategies at this historical moment can inform interventions to address health detriments and build resiliency for the future of families.