Date Presented Accepted for AOTA INSPIRE 2021 but unable to be presented due to online event limitations.
Parenting in the era of coping with the COVID-19 threat can be extremely challenging. For many parents, managing the family’s daily routines under the pandemic restrictions adds a new and significant dose of domestic and emotional labor to families’ lives and health. Differences between family routines and quality of life before and during the pandemic may highlight the unique needs of families and target appropriate intervention as needed.
Primary Author and Speaker: Liat Hen-Herbst
Additional Authors and Speakers: Yael Fogel
PURPOSE: This study investigates differences between family’s routines before and during the COVID-19 pandemic and their correlations with family quality of life. Managing the family’s daily routines under the COVID-19 threat adds a new and significant dose of domestic and emotional labor to families’ lives. How parents are affected by these changes strongly depends of the composition of their family. Conceptualized as an emotional defense against environmental factors with real or perceived potential to harm a child (Spoth et al., 2012), parents’ capacity to provide a protective shield in times of crisis can become compromised as they contend with challenges on many fronts-including their own distress and the nature and quality of their interactions with their children (Cobham & Newnham, 2018).
DESIGN: In this experimental study, participants completed online survey contains a demographic questionnaire, and two measurement instruments—the Family Routines Inventory (FRI) and the Beach Center Family Quality of Life Scale (FQOL) referring to their life before and during the COVID-19. Participants were 253 Israeli parents (43.5% fathers; 56.5% mothers), of whom 74% had two or three children, 18% had four children, and 3% had more than four.
METHOD: The FRI (Jensen et al., 1983), a valid and reliable tool which measures the extent and importance of routinization within a given family. It includes 25 items in 9 subscales: workday routines, weekend or leisure time, children’s routines, parent’s routines, bedtime, meals, extended family, leaving and homecoming, discipline, and chores. The FQOL (Hoffman et al., 2006) assesses families’ satisfaction with quality-of-life aspects in five subscales: family interaction, parenting, emotional well-being, physical/material well-being.
RESULTS: Significant differences (before/during) were found in the family routines’ frequency, t(252) = 3.93, p < .001, and in the level of importance, t(252) = 5.02, p < .001. The results indicate decreased quality of life during COVID-19, t(252) = 3.39, p < .001, especially in emotional well-being, t(252) = 3.05, p < .001, and physical/material well-being, t(252) = 7.61, p < .001. The FQOL results show significant positive correlations of frequency and importance with participant well-being both before and during COVID-19 (r = .34–.49, p < .001).
CONCLUSION: The results of the current study reinforce the assumption that the intersection between family and measures taken against COVID-19 runs deep. During the pandemic, home-routines include more parent–child conversations, parent–child play routines, and quiet routines involving the entire nuclear family each evening, in comparison to routines before the pandemic. Furthermore, the results indicated for an acute impact of COVID-19 on families’ emotional and physical well-being. As sequences of typical daily events that provide predictability in the environment and structure for daily life, routines can promote or damage health. Regular routines may serve as a protective coping resource and provide well-being in stressful situations, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Basic occupational therapy models deal with the importance of maintaining balanced, diverse daily routines as a key to efficient occupational performance. The COVID-19 provided an excellent opportunity to reinforce evidenced-based occupational therapy theory and highlight new implications for priorities in the therapy process.
IMPACT STATEMENT: This study’s results reinforce that occupational therapy’s continuing work with families to develop daily routines, improve and maintain existing routines, and find compensation and adaptation strategies for efficient routines can greatly improve family resilience and well-being in future unexpected crises.
References
Cobham, V. E., & Newnham, E. A. (2018). Trauma and parenting: Considering humanitarian crisis contexts. In M. R. Sanders & A. Morawska (Eds.), Handbook of parenting and child development across the lifespan (pp. 143–169). Springer.
Hoffman, L., Marquis, J., Poston, D., Summers, J. A., & Turnbull, A. (2006). Assessing family outcomes: Psychometric evaluation of the Beach Center Family Quality of Life Scale. Journal of Marriage and Family, 68, 1069–1083. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2006.00314.x
Jensen, E. W., James, S. A., Boyce, W. T., & Hartnett, S. A. (1983). The Family Routines Inventory: Development and validation. Social Science & Medicine, 17, 201–211.
Spoth, R. L., Trudeau, L. S., Guyll, M., & Shin, C. (2012). Benefits of universal intervention effects on a youth protective shield 10 years after baseline. Journal of Adolescent Health, 50, 414–417. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2011.06.010
