After virtual school and chaotic childcare, parents hope 2021 will be better

Parents are rounding the bend on a year that brought unique obstacles for them. From financial problems to childcare to schooling, being a parent in 2020 was difficult.

Heading into the new year, parents are feeling more optimistic about how 2021 will treat them. They are more likely than people who don’t have kids to believe that next year will be better for their physical health, personal finances, home, and mental health.

That might be in part be because, in a lot of ways, many families feel that they have already hit the bottom. Juggling childcare, financial pains, and the pandemic has led to anxiety and stress for many parents.

Things that at one point were normal, like sending kids to school, became filled with both risk and uncertainty. As parents tried to figure out what the 2020-2021 academic year would look like, they had to balance the risks of sending kids to school with the cost of keeping them at home.

And, while parents sometimes had a choice in whether to send their kids for in-person instruction, the ability to choose was taken away as the virus spread and districts shutdown in-person learning altogether. It only took a few weeks for many school districts to shift their plans for in-person education. By the middle of September, a little under half (44%) of parents were in school districts that had changed their plans since the new school year started, Axios/Ipsos polling found. As those plans changed, families had to scramble to figure out childcare, a stressor that kept coming up throughout the year.

For parents, their emotional well-being flowed with the ups and downs of educating kids during a pandemic. In the spring, parents suffered more than non-parents as schools went virtual and implemented untested remote learning plans. As the summer came and school finished, things emotionally became a bit more manageable for parents.

But, as the start of the school year came into focus, parents' emotional well-being worsened. Now, after the ups and downs of remote learning are a known entity, parents are now finally doing roughly the same as those without kids.

Beyond the challenges of schooling, families are also disproportionately saddled with financial worries. Since the summer, people with children in their household began taking on more household debt than those without kids. In the last month, 28% of parents increased their household debt, while only 18% of families with no children took on more debt. Additionally, parents are more than twice as likely than non-parents to be on Food Stamps, polling by the Axios/Ipsos Coronavirus Index found.

Childcare and the financial crunch families are in are interconnected issues. Many parents lost their jobs because of the pandemic. On top of that, as childcare became uncertain, many mothers left their jobs to take care of their kids, putting a financial burden on families.

Still, people with kids at home are finding new ways of connecting despite all the twists and turns 2020 threw at them. In the spring, people with children spent more time talking with their families and crafting than those without children.

It’s not been an easy year. For families, 2020 has been filled with ups and downs, emotionally and financially. Even as the stress, uncertainty, and financial pain of this year bleed into the next, many found ways of connecting through it all, and many are hopeful that next year will be better.