Essentially Stressed: Comparing the Parenting Stress of Essential and Non‐Essential Workers During the COVID ‐19 Pandemic

Objective This study interrogates the relationship between worker status (essential and non‐essential) and parenting stress among mothers and fathers during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Background At the height of the pandemic, essential worker parents were forced to juggle work–family demands alongside new virus exposure risks. Yet, we know little about how essential work affected the well‐being of mothers and fathers relative to non‐essential workers. Methods A sample of 777 employed Canadian parents from the Parents' Division of Labor During COVID‐19 survey (2020) was included. Ordinary least squares regression was used to examine the association between worker status and parenting stress. Seemingly unrelated estimation analysis was used to examine differences between mothers' and fathers' predicted parenting stress by worker status. Results Essential worker fathers reported higher levels of parenting stress than non‐essential worker fathers and essential worker mothers. Non‐essential worker mothers, however, did face higher levels of stress than non‐essential worker fathers. Conclusion Pandemic changes to work and family were less of a stressful “shock” to mothers since their parental responsibility was already taken for granted, while essential work stressors spilled over into fathers' parental lives, undermining their family “protector” role and harming their well‐being. Our study reveals an essential stress process where a combination of ecological, structural, and cultural stressors impacted the parenting stress of essential workers in gendered ways. Implications Resources to reduce parenting stress should be gender‐specific and account for both the unique stressors of frontline work and the less visible health costs of job flexibility for parents.