Coming of age in the pandemic has been rough on a generation of teens. Many forces converged with normal developmental processes to create a perfect psychological storm: pre-existing mental health crisis, intrusive social media, political polarization and instability, and real existential threats like gun violence and climate change.

Researchers have been studying how teens have fared and how can they be better supported—and new guidance is emerging for parents and teachers who are helping teens to recover from these extraordinarily turbulent years.

What do we know?

The pandemic period affected every important area of young people’s lives across the age spectrum, according to a March 2023 report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

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Academic achievement suffered, especially in reading- and math- related subjects. School engagement was often difficult: enrollment declined, absenteeism increased, and some children lacked access to virtual education. Parents, who under normal circumstances would have supported children’s learning, were themselves deeply stressed, especially those with young children, and some families were overwhelmed by financial hardship, food/housing insecurity, illness, and loss. Many educators met the moment with ingenuity and passion, but others suffered high rates of anxiety and burnout, and many left the profession.

Young people’s physical health suffered, too. Though children were less likely to experience severe COVID-19 disease, a meta-analysis confirmed that they had increased risk for multisystem inflammatory symptoms, and 25% of children and teens who were infected with the virus got long COVID—namely prolonged mood disturbances, fatigue and shortness of breath, sleep disorders, loss of smell and taste, and fevers. Infected children’s rates of diabetes increased, and children’s health was more generally undermined by interrupted preventative care: Kids missed routine vaccinations, blood lead screenings, vision screenings, and dental care.

The pandemic’s toll on young people’s psychological well-being was uneven, but where it had an impact, it was intense and sometimes devastating. More than 265,000 young people lost a parent or caregiver to Covid-19, with Native American, Black, and Latino children being two to four times more likely to lose a primary caregiver than white children. On almost any measure, impacts of all kinds were more acute for ethnic minority youth; low-income youth; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual (LGBTQIA+) youth, and special education students, with their symptoms continuing to persist at higher rates.

The pandemic poured fuel on the fire of the youth mental health crisis that’s been brewing for over a decade. Last fall, medical experts recommended that all children eight and older get screened for anxiety and that all teens get screened for depression.

In March, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report showing that youth mental health was still worsening, particularly for female, LGBTQIA+, and Black students, all of whom are experiencing more violence, distress, and suicidality. Six in ten female-identified students reported feeling “persistently sad or hopeless,” and sexual assault rates rose, especially for female students, LGBTQIA+ students, and American Indian and Alaska Native students.

Children and teens worry about real events that are going on their lives, and the content differs by life stage. Young teens report in surveys that they worry most about their immediate experiences—e.g., school and friendships—while older teens worry about their future and the world they will enter. For about a decade, teens’ top worries have been gun violence and climate change. Many young people feel lonely and isolated; they feel that no one notices when they’re worried and that there’s no one to turn to for support.

Too entangled at home

Emily Frost and Quetzal François facilitate Bay Area mentoring and rites of passage program Love Your Nature for girls ages 10-20, nearly half of whom are people of color and/or queer- or nonbinary-identifying. I spoke with them about what they’re seeing in teens. 

First, younger teens are worrying about their parents in new ways. “They’ve always been aware of their parents’ yelling or fighting,” Frost told me. “But now they’re overhearing their parents on the phone, late at night, discussing serious life decisions and struggles. Parents are stressed, so they’re less filtered, and teens feel scared about what they’re hearing. They’re also afraid to turn to their parents with their own problems because they don’t want to be an extra burden.”

“Young people have a deep longing to feel connected to something bigger than themselves. This includes nature, civic engagement, social justice, and volunteering. Getting to be part of a meaningful experience is so key.”

―Quetzal Franço, Love Your Nature

In normal circumstances, young teens would begin individuating, i.e., seeking greater psychological autonomy while maintaining their connections. In typical individuation, young teens need to take their parents’ availability and stability for granted in order to push out; they might even create more conflict in order to practice gaining a separate mind.

But it’s very challenging to individuate from someone you’re worried about, or have to take care of. And in lockdown, not only were young teens stuck in the same physical space as the adults from whom they were individuating; they were also cut off from access to the non-parental people—primarily their peers, but also mentors, teachers, and coaches—they needed in order to individuate.

Older teens in Frost and François’ groups, who are poised to launch into adulthood, express an acute sense that their future is uncertain. In stable situations, adolescents are designed to rush into the future—they’re creative risk-takers who excitedly move with their peers, their generation, toward what’s new and interesting.

But these teens have deeply experienced losses of things they’d taken for granted—loved ones dying from COVID-19, school closures and the elimination of their educational and social worlds, and even disappointing college admissions that seem to be increasingly selective. Add to that a sense of impending doom about the climate crisis, gun violence, and health concerns, and teens don’t have access to the embodied feeling of confidence they need in order to launch.

A 2022 Stanford University study bears this out: Neuroimaging of brains of 163 young teens before and during the pandemic showed accelerated brain aging due to the pandemic. Areas affected include memory formation, emotion management, and executive function. The changes are similar to those resulting from chronic adversity like violence, neglect, or severe family dysfunction.

Too much stress

What’s more, these dynamics create chronic stress that burden the nervous system and teens’ development. “The cellular experience of young people,” Frost said, “is, ‘I’m not safe, this is not safe, and I don’t know what to do about it.’”

It’s a feature of development that children’s bodies are keenly attuned to signals of stress in their environment, as though they’re “emotional Geiger counters.” Beginning in-utero, signals of stress cross the placenta, causing epigenetic changes that direct a cascade of hormonal, endocrine, and neurological reactions that comprise the body’s hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) system, also known as the stress regulation system.

I spoke with developmental psychologist Megan Gunnar at the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota, who’s been studying the impact of stress on children—and how the body regulates it—for 45 years.

“The stress system is very plastic [modifiable] for the first 18-24 months, and then it’s set for awhile,” she explains. “Then puberty helps to reopen it, and adolescence becomes another period of heightened plasticity—for good or for ill.”

About a year before signs of puberty are visible, the sex steroids begin to remodel the brain in preparation for adulthood. An over-blooming of synaptic connections between neurons allows for creative potential, and synaptic pruning eliminates unused connections. As a result, the influences in teens’ lives at that time carry inordinate importance.

Teens also become highly sensitive to others, especially their peers. Their reward circuitry is remodeled, boosting their desire to explore their world—and outpacing their “braking system” which takes longer to develop and will make them more cautious, especially in the presence of peers. Some evidence shows that part of the plasticity taking place may involve some alterations to the stress regulation system.

“Adolescents are interested in new experiences, novelty-seeking, especially with their peers,” Gunnar says. “In normal circumstances it’s a wonderful, fabulous time of emotional development,” Gunnar said. But there’s also a feature of the plasticity that makes them more vulnerable. “In adolescence, the parents get ‘booted out’ of their hypothalamus.” What does that mean? Gunnar explains:

In childhood, there’s a very powerful capacity of parents, especially in secure relationships, to buffer the child’s reactivity of the HPA axis. The child produces less cortisol (stress hormone) when they’re in the presence of their secure caregivers. But we find in our research that that goes away about the midpoint in puberty. At that time, the parent’s presence no longer automatically dampens the body’s stress response, and teens begin to regulate more on their own—at least in individualistic cultures. (This effect hasn’t been studied in other cultures.)

Gunnar’s research is congruent with other research that shows, for example, that, unlike in earlier childhood, teens’ brains are more activated by unfamiliar voices than by their mothers’ voice, consistent with the biological drive to focus beyond the family.

Along with individuation and a greater peer orientation, the downgrade of parental stress regulation may be part of an evolutionary design that nudges young people away from the nest and drives them to form new communities.

“Later, when they form an attachment to an adult romantic partner, that partner is ‘let into’ the nervous system,” Gunnar says, “and they will be able to help buffer stress. But in the meanwhile, adolescents are vulnerable.”

Still, Gunnar says, parents can continue to be a regulatory source, helping their teens figure out how to regulate themselves in other ways. “We see in our research that when parents help with emotion coaching, teens are better able to regulate their cortisol response than kids whose parents don’t.” 

In the lockdown, virtual access to others was vital; kids connected with friends and supportive communities across the internet, including on social media and gaming platforms. But some of the interactions may have harmed some of them.

In May, the U.S. Surgeon General issued a bracing advisory about the risks of social media to young people’s mental health. It cautioned parents to set limits around social media use, and urged greater regulation and oversight of social media technology companies. One provocative—but nonscientific—global survey suggests that the later a child accesses a smart phone, the better their mental health as adults, especially their self-confidence and social life. Another study shows that lower media use increases teens’ prosocial behavior and self-regulation. Some research blames social media for the mental health crisis, while other studies document individual variation—i.e., some kids feel better using it, and some feel worse.

Regardless, there’s a growing skepticism about smart-phone access and social media use. Bay Area therapist Sheri Glucoft Wong said she’s seeing more families grappling with recalibrating screen time in their households.

How can parents help?

Remember that some kids are fine. The impact of the pandemic was not universally adverse. At scale, the mental health crisis—and shortage of professional help—is alarming. Still, depending on the measure used, statistically one quarter, one third, or half of kids may be alright. Some kids even benefitted. Shy and socially anxious teens, and teens who were experiencing low-grade trauma at school, were relieved by the break. Extra care needs to be taken to reintegrate and support them.

Remember the basics. Sleep, nutrition, exercise and friendships are foundational to all other functioning. One Stanford neuroscientist emphasizes sleep above all for wellbeing, and teens are notoriously short on it. Studies show more sleep for teens improves many measures of wellbeing and achievement. Challengesuccess.org offers simple tools to help make conscious choices about time use around the clock.

Focus on psychological well-being and emotional skills. All the professionals I spoke with for this article agreed that support for healthy psychological skills is as important as—and perhaps more important than—academic skills. Focus on relationships and emotional health, they advise. This guidance echoes 75 years of research on resilience. Lisa Damour’s book, The Emotional Lives of Teenagers is an excellent place to learn more about how to do that.

Frost and François recommend sharing with teens what you’re learning about well-being. Leave materials out for them to read, finish the podcast you’re listening to while you get in the car together, etc. Casual and adjacent sharing helps support teens in a way that’s not didactic or face-to-face.

Make yourself prepared and available to have conversations about things that really matter, about topics that are relevant to your teen. “Teens are meaning-making machines,” Frost quips. “They care about how the world works and their place in it and they want to have conversations about important things.”

Have relationships, don’t just worry about them. “Being in the relationship is more important than the status check-ins of ‘How are you doing?’” Frost and François say. Have supportive family routines, a monthly café date, and be in the world together. “You’re planting seeds for their future and for the future of your relationship. It’s not one big thing, really, it’s how all the small actions day-to-day add up. Even if they balk at your suggestion, it’s worth persisting,” Frost says.

Gunnar concurs: “If I were the parent of a teenager right now, I would be working hard to have that child and the whole family have time when we’re just being a family and not in the media, on screens. Dinnertime, playing games, quieter, simpler things that provide that sense of grounding. And I would do a lot of listening and less talking.”

Clarify emotion language. Frost and François observe that since mental-health language has become more prevalent in our culture, more teens are using terms like “anxiety,” “panic attack,” or “dissociation.” It can be startling at first. Sometimes teens “front” with hyperbolic language; they’re trying it on, but it doesn’t always serve them. Have a growth mindset and see it as an opening for more learning, more talking. Ask gentle questions like, “What do you mean by that?” Tone is everything, says Frost.

In The Emotional Life of Teenagers, Damour reminds us that teens have big emotions in the best of times, and we can often help them understand and manage their feelings. It is when emotions become unmanageable or overwhelming that some professional help may be advised.

Help teens connect to something bigger than themselves. “Young people have a deep longing to feel connected to something bigger than themselves,” François said. “This includes nature, civic engagement, social justice, and volunteering. Getting to be part of a meaningful experience is so key.” Frost adds, “The impact on this generation of being the ‘turning point’ in the climate crisis is underestimated. Their relationship to nature is huge on many levels. And there’s a positive impact of spending time there, experiencing the mystery, the universe, and forces much greater than themselves.”

Reclaim exploration as a part of adolescence. In the 1960s, adolescence was seen as a period of exploration necessary to achieve a healthy identity. We seem to have lost that as we pressure teens to foreclose into decisions, identities, and careers, and as we reduce teens’ free time to be bored and mess around which is critical to developing their unique talents. “Allow kids to not know who they are and still feel valid,” Frost and François advise. Teens interpret even well-intentioned queries as pressure to have answers, and they feel they’re disappointing parents by not knowing.

Take care of yourselves. Teens can be encouraged to be kind and considerate, but they should not be their parents’ emotional caregivers. “Find your communities, find your regulation, your check points,” Frost advises parents, “so you don’t put so much on the teen to reassure you or to give you answers. Teens need to be free of their low-level anxiety about how you’re really doing.”

Connecting with other parents can also help set norms among peer groups, e.g., social media use. Remember that you’re modeling self-care as well as becoming a better partner inside the relationship for your child to experience.

Resume collaboration with teachers. The three-way relationship among kids, parents, and teachers that has long been proven to support students broke down during the pandemic, Glucoft Wong observes. Parents, kids, and teachers missed out on the benefits of collaborative relationships and friendships and the seamless sharing of information that happens when campuses are open and people interact in person. Reach out to teachers—and other parents—to resume that communication and learn how to best support your students.

Set social media guidelines. A young teen’s brain is very different from that of an older adolescent. In The Emotional Lives of Teenagers, Damour recommends keeping phones out of bedrooms at night and putting age-appropriate brakes on tech access, for example, starting with a phone that can send and receive texts but not access social media. Common Sense Media also has helpful guidelines. But make this a partnership; one study found that excessive restrictions in the absence of communication made teens more secretive and more relationally aggressive.

Growing up in a stressful and unpredictable world will be part of this generation’s story, but in the safety of our patient gaze, warm regard, and gentle support, they may even develop hidden talents—gifts and abilities that we cannot imagine and that only emerge in difficult circumstances.

As the author and artist Chanel Miller writes in Know My Name, “You have to hold out to see how your life unfolds, because it is most likely beyond what you can imagine. It is not a question of if you will survive this, but what beautiful things await you when you do….Wait for the good to come.”

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Loneliness is not just bad for men’s mental health — it may be bad for their bones, too, according to a new study. 

And while social isolation may have a negative impact on the bone health of men, this is not true of women, the researchers found. 

Dr. Rebecca Mountain, of Maine Health Institute for Research in Scarborough, Maine, was lead researcher on the study, as multiple outlets reported.

LONELINESS AND UNHAPPINESS CAN AGE US FASTER THAN SMOKING: NEW STUDY

The study was presented on Sunday at ENDO 2023, the Endocrine Society’s annual meeting, in Chicago, Illinois.

“Social isolation is a potent form of psychosocial stress,” said Dr. Mountain in a statement, “and is a growing public health concern, particularly among older adults.”

Loneliness is not just bad for men’s mental health — it may be bad for their bones, too, according to a study from Maine Health Institute for Research.  (iStock)

She also said, “Even prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has significantly increased the prevalence of isolation and loneliness, researchers have been concerned about a rising ‘epidemic of loneliness,'” as SWNS reported.

Social isolation, she also said, is associated with an increased risk for many health conditions, including mental disorders, as well as higher overall rates of illness and death.

Social isolation is associated with an increased risk for many health conditions, including mental disorders. 

“Previous clinical research,” she said, “has demonstrated that psychosocial stressors, and subsequent mental health disorders, are major risk factors for osteoporosis and fracture, which disproportionally affect older adults.”

She added that the impacts of social isolation on “bone, however, have not been thoroughly investigated.”

Social isolation caused significant reductions in bone quality, including reduced bone mineral density, in the male mice but not the female mice, a new study out of Maine Health reported. (iStock)

In the study, researchers exposed adult mice to social isolation — meaning one mouse per cage — or grouped housing, with four mice per cage — for four weeks.

The scientists found that social isolation caused significant reductions in bone quality, including reduced bone mineral density, in the male mice — but not the female mice.

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The article’s abstract indicated that “isolated male mice had signs of reduced bone remodeling represented by reduced osteoblast numbers [cells that form new bones], osteoblast-related gene expression and osteoclast-related gene expression. However, isolated females had increased bone resorption-related gene expression, without any change in bone mass.”

More study is needed on the topic

Dr. Mountain said, “Overall, our data suggest that social isolation has a dramatic negative effect on bone in male mice, but it may operate through different mechanisms or in a different time frame in female mice.”

She added, “Future research is needed to understand how these findings translate to human populations.”

Said the lead researcher of a new study on loneliness, “Our work provides critical insight into the effects of isolation on bone and has key clinical implications as we grapple with the long-term health impacts of the rise in social isolation related to the COVID-19 pandemic.”  (iStock)

She also said, “Our work provides critical insight into the effects of isolation on bone and has key clinical implications as we grapple with the long-term health impacts of the rise in social isolation related to the COVID-19 pandemic.” 

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The Endocrine Society is a global community of physicians and scientists “dedicated to accelerating scientific breakthroughs and improving patient health and well-being,” the group says on its website.

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Maine Health Institute for Research, for its part, supports and encourages a “broad spectrum of research,” the group says on its site, “ranging from basic laboratory-based research through translational research, which works to apply basic discoveries to medical problems, to clinical research, which studies the direct application of new drugs, devices and treatment protocols to patients, to health services research which seeks to use research methods to help improve and evaluate health care delivery programs and new technologies.”

Maureen Mackey is managing editor of lifestyle for Fox News Digital.

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“There was a consistent reporting of better mental-health assessments” in Quebec than the rest of Canada, Jack Jedwab says.

Author of the article:

Aaron Derfel  •  Montreal Gazette

Published May 29, 2023  •  4 minute read

Jack Jedwab, seen in a file photo, was lead author of the study on Canadians’ mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. Photo by Pierre Obendrauf /Montreal Gazette

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Quebec’s pandemic lockdowns and its months-long curfews — largely panned by most of the public — did not harm Quebecers’ mental health as feared, a comprehensive new study suggests.

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In fact, Quebecers’ mental-health self-assessment scored higher than people in other provinces across the country, according to a Léger Marketing survey commissioned by the Association for Canadian Studies and the Metropolis Institute.

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The survey found that 78 per cent of Quebecers rated their mental health as either good or very good since the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis. That compared with 50 per cent of Ontario and British Columbia respondents feeling this way. And in Alberta, which had imposed the least stringent public-health protections, just 48 per cent of respondents had a positive mental-health self-assessment.

Source: Association for Canadian Studies Photo by Association for Canadian Studies

“One would think that because of what was being described as conditions that contribute to greater stress and mental-health problems — those lockdowns, curfews (only in Quebec) and so forth that diminished interactions socially — that they would contribute to poorer outcomes with respect to mental health,” Jack Jedwab, lead author of the study, told the Montreal Gazette.

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“But in the case of Quebec, it didn’t seem to change the pattern at all for almost the entire period. There was a consistent reporting of better mental-health assessments.”

The findings would appear to bolster the case for public-health protections and challenge the rhetoric of the so-called Freedom Convoy protesters, who laid siege to much of Ottawa in January and February of 2022 to pressure governments into lifting mitigation measures. The study also suggests that consistent messaging by authorities emphasizing social solidarity is important in maintaining mental health during a crisis.

Jedwab and his fellow researchers commissioned multiple surveys on Canadians’ assessment of their mental health since March 2021. The latest web-based survey of 1,843 Canadians (including an oversampling of Quebecers) was carried out from Feb. 20 to March 3.

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For the most recent survey, Jedwab drilled down deeper into Quebec to determine whether there was a difference in mental-health self-assessments by anglophones versus francophones. Statistically, he found none. Just 5.3 per cent of francophone respondents rated their mental health as bad or very bad compared with 5.2 per cent of anglophones.

Source: Association for Canadian Studies

“What we discovered when we did the oversampling was that anglophones were showing roughly similar self-assessments of their mental health to francophones in Quebec,” Jedwab explained. “So in other words, it’s more of a Quebec thing than a Quebec versus Canada distinction in terms of those self-assessed positive mental-health outcomes.

“It then sort of begs the question as to why Quebecers over that entire period — regardless of their language background — assessed their mental health more positively than other Canadians,” Jedwab added.

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“That might have to do with … political messaging as well as from  influencers, where Quebecers were being told ‘ça va bien aller,’ it’s all going to be OK, or ‘we’re all in this together.’ This was a common message (across Canada), but perhaps to some extent those comfort-giving signals were stronger in Quebec with respect to the impact that they may or may not have had on mental-health outcomes.”

Indeed, Premier François Legault’s decision to impose two lengthy curfews — the sole jurisdiction in North America to do so — did not hurt him politically, as his Coalition Avenir Québec government was re-elected to a bigger majority in the provincial election last Oct. 3.

Another key finding in the study points to the resilience of Canadians when it comes to their mental health. Canadians’ negative self-assessments of their psychological health fell from 17.4 per cent in March 2021 to 13 per cent last March. In contrast, self-assessments of excellent or very good mental health rose from a combined 38 per cent in March 2021 to 45.7 per cent last March.

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Source: Association for Canadian Studies

Still, the study did contain a disturbing finding: of those respondents across Canada who assessed their mental health as very bad, only 22.2 per cent actually received a diagnosis of depression from a medical professional. This would suggest that access to psychological services may be lacking across the country. In Quebec, nearly 21,000 people are waiting for such services, according to the Health Ministry.

“Without questioning the accuracy of (a) self-assessment — it doesn’t imply a depression diagnosis — (this finding) raises the possibility of many people falling through the cracks and not getting a medical assessment if needed,” Jedwab said.

Among other findings, one in five Canadians reported they received a depression diagnosis at one point in their lives. In Quebec, 22.3 per cent of francophones indicated they had depression, compared with 17.9 per cent of anglophones. Although Jedwab did not explicitly state this, the difference may be because anglophones in Quebec are having a harder time than francophones in gaining access to psychological services.

What’s more, students and unemployed persons across Canada “were far more inclined to see a rise in mental-health problems since the outset of the pandemic,” the study observed.

aderfel@postmedia.com

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Though the rise of remote work has been praised for providing greater work/life balance, many parents are finding that being away from the office can also have serious drawbacks, according to a new study shared exclusively with USA TODAY.

Roughly 4 in 10 parents say that when they work from home, there are times they go days without leaving their house, while 33% say they “feel very isolated,” when working remotely, according to the ninth annual Modern Family Index, conducted by The Harris Poll for Bright Horizons, a global provider of early education, child care and workforce education services.

Their angst comes at a time when employers’ empathy for the challenges of juggling parenting with work is waning, says Bright Horizons CEO Stephen Kramer, leading more moms and dads to again worry about finding accessible, affordable child care while fretting that family responsibilities could derail their climb up the career ladder.

“There should be a real worry about the mental health impact and isolated feelings employees have because of remote work,” Kramer says. “I think ultimately early in the pandemic, employers felt they were providing good support to working parents by offering more flexible schedules, but that’s come at a cost and we’re at a place where providing real supports to working parents is even more critical than the flexible work schedules.”

Flexibility matters but some worry about career

To be sure, many parents cherish the flexibility that a remote or hybrid work schedule gives them.

Among working parents, 36% said they felt somewhat more fulfilled at their current job than they did three years ago, and 58% of that group said flexible schedules were a factor in that satisfaction.

But 35% of parents who work from home part of the time believe their hybrid schedule is negatively affecting their careers, and 40% would like their managers to advise them on how much time they should be in the office.

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Fathers were particularly concerned, with 44% of working dads fearing that if they utilize benefits aimed at work/life balance, it would negatively affect their performance evaluations.

Some may be right to worry. “In the beginning stages of the pandemic and during the most difficult parts … employers were actually quite sympathetic to the challenges of working parents when all the child care centers were closed and schools went remote,” Kramer says. “That has almost completely waned … and the expectation today is that employees will be productive for their employers and at this point they will have figured out how to do their family responsibilities.’’

Loneliness is an ‘epidemic’: How it’s affecting Americans

Juggling jobs and family

Roughly 8 in 10 parents who work remotely at least part of the time juggle jobs with their family responsibilities during the workday, with 47% running their kids to activities and 44% helping their children with their homework.

A quarter of working parents who are doing that double duty hardly ever mention their workday parenting tasks to their supervisors, while 41% say they sometimes believe they need to hide their personal responsibilities from their co-workers.

Such multitasking is necessary as the search for childcare – already difficult before the pandemic – became harder during the health crisis and has yet to recover, Kramer said.

Remote work is proving challenging for some working parents wrestling with isolation and worries about advancing in their career.

“Given the scarcity of child care, there is really concern about access to child care spaces and places,” he says. In addition to worries about the quality of providers, “there is also a real challenge around affordability.”

Essential or front-line workers who often had to be on-site during the pandemic are particularly hard hit, with the Bright Horizons report finding that 44% say it’s hard to juggle their work schedules around child care as compared to 28% of their peers. Only 49% of those workers say their employers have changed or added benefits that better support them, while 57% of their working parent peers say they’ve gotten such additional assistance.

Child care a constant struggle

But while essential workers have more of a struggle, child care and services for older children remain an issue for working parents across the board.

Support for families: Biden takes aim at child care costs, availability with new executive order

“Whether you’re working from home or from the office, the reality is that you can’t be both a productive employee as well as a full-time caregiver,” Kramer says.

Employers are taking heed. Those who offer on-site child care centers are finding “it’s been an incentive for them to get their employees back to the office since those employees who use the center see the worksite not only as a place to work but also as a place to bring their children,” he says.

Backup child care is also becoming increasingly popular, with more than 200 employers that work with Bright Horizons starting to offer that benefit during the pandemic, its largest increase over a two-year period.

JP Morgan Chase’s employees have a mix of schedules, with its most senior staffers back full time, others who can do their jobs with a hybrid schedule on-site at least three days a week, and half their staffers having worked at their locations throughout the pandemic.

The company has 13 on-site child care centers, and since the pandemic has expanded its child care offerings both at corporate locations and near where staffers live.

“The needs of our employees really shifted so we pivoted our strategy,” says Lilly Wyttenbach, head of Global Wellness at JPMorgan Chase.

One key change is enabling employees whose children no longer need child care to access other services. For instance, the company offers subsidized back-up child care to employees 20 days a year. Now they can use four of those hours for their children to receive virtual tutoring.

“We unlocked this benefit of backup child care that tends to be for younger children to a greater number of parents,” said Wyttenbach, adding that the benefit is being used by parents who are both hybrid and in the office full-time as many children continue to catch up academically after falling behind during the pandemic.

Backup child care has been a lifeline for Neha Mehrotra, 32, a marketing manager for PayPal who is the married mother of two daughters ages six years old and six months.

During a two-week period when neither her parents or her mother-in-law were available to watch her infant, “backup care stood (in) for us,” she says. Without the in-home provider who was able to help out, the “hybrid work environment becomes very difficult and in-office work becomes impossible. So in that case, this benefit has really helped.”

Unlike some parents, Mehrotra has also found her hybrid schedule, which allows her to go into the office one day a week and work the rest of the time from home, to be ideal.

“I thoroughly enjoy the flexibility of working from home and also having the opportunity to see my colleagues and have some adult time,” says Mehrotra, who lives in San Jose, California. Having a largely remote schedule after the birth of her second daughter is a sharp contrast to the experience she had working full-time in an office after the birth of her first.

“This time around my daughter came post-pandemic and I was in this new hybrid work culture,” she says. “I can see the vast difference in my mental health. I have time for myself. I’ve given my commute hours to yoga and meditation and … at the end of the day, when I’m done, I open the door and I see my kids.”

Mental health services

For others, however, who are struggling emotionally, mental health support is another key benefit workers are seeking and some employers are aiming to offer.

JP Morgan Chase has a new partnership with Spring Health that will provide customized mental health care plans, free coaching and free therapy that can be scheduled at any time to its U.S. employees and their family members.

“The pandemic exacerbated access and affordability issues” for mental health care, says Wyttenbach, adding that the company has offered off-site and onsite clinicians and counseling for years, but is now enabling employees to see therapists who are part of their health plan’s network without paying a deductible.

Such benefits are necessary, Kramer says.

“There are working parents … who say they go for days without going outside their house. That’s clearly not healthy,” he says. “Others are really concerned about their career mobility given their either hybrid or remote schedule … Ultimately there are things employers need to be doing in order to make that balance more realistic for employees. And providing child support, backup care support and mental health supports are all things they need to do and have started to do coming out of the pandemic.’’

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Remote work jobs are taking a toll on some parents mental health

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