The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on young fathers and the services that support them

The COVID-19 pandemic and state mandated policy of lockdown in March 2020, has had observable impacts on the organisation of family lives and personal relationships. Despite the recency of these major changes, emerging evidence suggests that the crisis has produced a multitude of disproportionate and uneven effects along traditional lines of inequality including gender, age, race and class (Power et al. 2020). 
\nEven before the crisis young fathers experienced a range of disadvantages and were stigmatised because of their young age and gender. While the relative paucity of research about young fathers is beginning to be addressed (Neale et al. 2015), the recency of the COVID-19 crisis means that we know little of the immediate and short-term impacts of the pandemic on these young men and their families or about how families have responded and adapted to the new social conditions that the crisis produced. 
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\nA key, emergent finding was that young fathers were at heightened risk of loneliness and social isolation because of the lockdown. At the same time however, the crisis also engendered new forms of social solidarity and community support in the localities in which the young fathers live.

In this briefing paper we explore the earning and caring experiences and trajectories of a cohort of seventeen young fathers. We examine continuities and change in their work and family arrangements, the impacts of these changes on their parenting trajectories and personal relationships, and the extent to which these experiences differ for young fathers who are resident and non-resident. The balance of earning and caring has always been negotiated and shared by parents to varying degrees (Neale and Davies, 2015), but never more rapidly than under the renewed socio-economic conditions created by the COVID-19 pandemic and national lockdown. As a secondary effect of the lockdown as a major public health intervention, the pandemic has had significant gendered effects, forcing widespread change and renegotiations in the employment and caring circumstances of both men and women.

This article explores the impacts of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown policies on young fathers and their families. We present analyses from a larger programme of qualitative longitudinal research examining young fatherhood in the UK and Sweden to develop a unique international comparative and empirical contribution. The views and experiences of young fathers are examined in the context of two ostensibly different policy approaches during the pandemic. Organised thematically to enable comparison, our findings demonstrate myriad impacts, illustrating heightened precarity in young fathers’ transitions into and through fatherhood linked to restrictions on their engagement and changes to their education and employment trajectories and relational contexts, especially in the UK. We observe how differences in policy approaches before and during the first wave of the pandemic shaped the experiences of young fathers in the respective countries.

Our contribution draws upon a collaborative project called ‘Diverse Dads’, which ran between October 2020 and April 2021, during the 2020–2021 COVID-19 pandemic. The team comprised members of the North East Young Dads and Lads (NEYDL) Project, advisors from support organisations that champion inclusivity, and the Following Young Fathers Further (FYFF) research team. ‘Diverse Dads’ sought to identify and address gaps in service provision for young minoritised dads in the North East, and to promote cross-sector conversations concerning inclusive support for young dads from diverse communities. With support provided remotely by the FYFF team, peer research was undertaken by three young men from NEYDL. Our work highlights how methods of coproduction and cocreation were achieved during the pandemic. NEYDL is also embarking on an ambitious new digital service journey with partners DigiDAD, producing digital outputs that are made by and for young fathers. Working collaboratively, the peer research team and DigiDAD produced a set of videos designed to support training for professionals in mainstream, family, and statutory services. Showcasing one of these creative outputs, our contribution will discuss the continued value of coproduction and cocreation with young people and using creative, digital methods to support productive discussions between young fathers, professionals, and researchers.

BackgroundThe Covid-19 pandemic has put an unprecedented pressure on families with children. How parents were affected by the first Covid-19 lockdown during the early postpartum period, an already challenging period for many, is unknown.AimTo investigate the associations between Covid-19 related stress, mental health, and insensitive parenting practices in mothers and fathers with young infants during the first Dutch Covid-19 lockdown.MethodsThe Dutch Covid-19 and Perinatal Experiences (COPE-NL) study included 681 parents of infants between 0 and 6 months (572 mothers and 109 fathers). Parents filled out online questionnaires about Covid-19 related stress, mental health (i.e. anxiety and depressive symptoms), and insensitive parenting. Hierarchical regression models were used to analyze the data.ResultsParents of a young infant reported high rates of Covid-19 related stress, with higher reported stress in mothers compared to fathers. Additionally, the percentages of mothers and fathers experiencing clinically meaningful mental health symptoms during the pandemic were relatively high (mothers: 39.7% anxiety, 14.5% depression; fathers: 37.6% anxiety, 6.4% depression). More Covid-19 related stress was associated with more mental health symptoms in parents and increased insensitive parenting practices in mothers.ConclusionsThe results emphasize the strain of the pandemic on young fathers’ and mothers’ mental health and its potential negative consequences for parenting. As poor parental mental health and insensitive parenting practices carry risk for worse child outcomes across the lifespan, the mental health burden of the Covid-19 pandemic might not only have affected the parents, but also the next generation.

In this chapter, we draw on insights from the first wave of semi- structured interviews for a qualitative longitudinal study called Following Young Fathers Further (hereafter FYFF). The substantive foci of the interviews were adapted to explore the diverse impacts of the COVID- 19 pandemic on young fathers and the services that engage them. Evidence suggests that
\neven prior to the pandemic, these young men were already more likely to be experiencing family poverty and/ or social disadvantage (Hadley, 2017; Neale et al, 2015) and to be living in low- income families and contexts. They also negotiate stigma because of their young age and gender (Beggs Weber, 2012; Neale et al, 2015a) and therefore face a unique set of challenges in their transitions to parenthood and throughout their parenting journeys.

The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on young fathers and the services that support them