Thirty-one percent of parents are likely to keep their child home this fall even if schools open for teaching in the building, while 49% said they would probably or definitely send their child to school, according to a paper published in JAMA Pediatrics over the weekend.
"Schools need to act soon to allay parental concerns and provide options for what will be available for them should they opt to keep their child home," the authors write. “Policy makers need to ensure that there are adequate resources provided to schools to meet parental expectations regarding personal protective equipment, social distancing, symptom checking, and other steps recommended by ... the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”
The authors of the study also noted that “Structural barriers, such as lack of workplace flexibility [for parents] and potential school-level inequities in implementation of preventive measures, must be acknowledged and addressed where possible.”
The study noted that the most socioeconomically disadvantaged families find it particularly difficult to cope with the situation, "because they tend to have the least resources for remote learning, the least support for home learning from their child’s school, the least job flexibility, and the greatest risk of experiencing other stressors that may compound parenting challenges."
Other results from the study showed that 40% of parents were more than moderately worried that they would catch the virus or that the healthcare system would not be able to protect their loved ones, 34% were more than moderately worried about multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children and only 29% said they were confident or very confident that school could prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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