“Please, please not another lockdown - I can’t do it again.” The Stressors Discussed on Online Canadian Forums by Parents of Young Children During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately impacted parents, though few studies have explored how parents are using online parenting forums to discuss stressors and obtain information and social support during the COVID-19 pandemic. We aimed to elucidate what stressors parents are discussing and seeking information and social support regarding through online Canadian parenting forums during the COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 337 threads focusing on parenting questions and discussions on two popular online forums, BabyCentre Canada and Canadian Parents What to Expect, were analyzed using a qualitative framework analytic approach. Our emergent framework identified three main themes of parental stressors discussed by parents on the forums during COVID-19 (household stressors, child health, parental health), each with associated subthemes. The findings suggest that skills-based online interventions, such as programs grounded in dialectical behavioral therapy that focus on stress management, self-compassion, and supporting child development while managing multiple roles, may be particularly helpful in mitigating stress among this parent population. Further, our findings inform how mental health organizations working with parents could integrate online forums into their pre-existing websites as a means of providing credible information and peer support regarding the themes of stressors identified through our analysis. Future research should evaluate parents’ use of other virtual modalities for seeking health information, parenting advice, or social connection online to ensure that parents have access to credible information through their preferred mediums.