I posted a survey a few weeks back about family stress, screen time and other outcomes and how they depend on schooling mode. The author, Joshua Hartshorne, promised a write-up of results, and here they are!
You can see the whole discussion of what they learned in this helpful document here. By far the best line is: “The closest we have to good news is that back-to-school paradigms don’t seem to have much effect on parental sleep. This has to be tempered by the fact that nobody is getting enough sleep.”
Parents who are homeschooling report less stress than any other group (selection?) and online school generates slightly higher stress than in-person school. This seems broadly consistent with anecdote, although for me the differences are smaller perhaps than I might have though. We are all very stressed!
I’d love to see more research on this. Clearly, the pandemic is having wide ranging effects on parents, which are moderated (in perhaps non-obvious ways) by schooling mode. We need to know more, especially as we look to the fall. I hope Joshua and others will continue both data collection and analysis on these (and that we as parents will help them!)
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