Survey: Family quality time increased at beginning of lockdowns
During the first several months of the pandemic in the U.S., Dina Levy made her young daughter and son go on walks with her three times a day.
They kicked a soccer ball around at the nearby high school. The children, then 11 and 8, created an obstacle course out of chalk, and the three timed each other running through it. They also ate all their meals together.
Levy is among scores of parents who indicated in a new survey from the U.S. Census Bureau they spent more time eating, reading and playing with their children from March 2020 to June of 2020, when coronavirus lockdowns were at their most intense, than they had in previous years.
“With school and work, you split up and go your own way for the day, but during coronavirus, we were a unit,” said Levy, an attorney who lives in New Jersey. “It really was, I don’t want to say worthwhile since this pandemic has been so awful for so many people, but there was a lot of value to us as a family.”
In a report on the survey released this week, the Census Bureau includes some caveats: A large number of people did not respond. Also, compared to previous years, more of the parents in this survey were older, foreign-born, married, educated and above the poverty level. The survey also does not measure the long-term impact of the pandemic, which is now entering its third calendar year, so it is unknown whether the increased time with children has stuck.
The findings of the Survey of Income and Program Participation are based on interviews with one parent from 22,000 households during the first four months of the pandemic in the U.S. The survey found the proportion of meals the socalled reference parents shared with their children increased from 84% to 85% from 2018 to 2020, and from 56% to 63% for the other parents.