Shreya Bhise’s research while affiliated with Johns Hopkins University and other places

Few studies have examined the pandemic’s impact on both parents-to-be. Our study examined parents’-to-be pandemic-related stress, correlates of pandemic-related stress, and dyadic agreement on pandemic-related stress and its impact. Participants consisted of 74 parent-to-be dyads recruited from a larger text-messaging intervention of fathers-to-be with lower education from February 2020 to February 2022 before their partner was 25 weeks gestation from one mid-Atlantic U.S. city. Our baseline cross-sectional data assessed parents’ pandemic-related stress, perceived pandemic-related impact on infant interactions, help with infant care by caregivers, access to health care, concerns about finances, and participants’ background characteristics. We compared perceived pandemic-related stress and impact within dyads. Separate multivariate linear regressions explored factors associated with pandemic-related stress without and with adjustment for participants’ characteristics stratified by fathers- and mothers-to be. Our findings showed overall low levels of pandemic-related stress, with fathers-to-be within dyads reporting lower levels of pandemic-related stress than reported by mothers-to-be. We found differential factors were associated with greater pandemic-related stress for fathers- than mothers-to-be, except that for both parents greater pandemic-related stress was associated with greater concerns about being able to interact with their own infant and getting infant care help from the mothers’ parents. Whereas greater pandemic-related stress for mothers-to-be was associated with only concerns about getting infant care help, greater stress for fathers-to-be was associated with concerns about getting infant care help and accessing health care. Findings have implications for better understanding expectant parents’ differential response to stressful events that may be informed by gender role expectations during pregnancy and the postpartum period. Clinical Trial Registry and Registration number. Not applicable for the current data presented.