A new study found that about a quarter of parents lied about their child’s health status in order to get around restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The study, which was published on Monday by the JAMA Network Open, showed that 25.9% of parents surveyed had engaged in behaviors that misrepresented their child’s health in light of public health measures.
During the pandemic, many restrictions had been put in place to protect children, especially those who were in school.
The measures varied from state to state. For example, New York state required schools to practice social distancing and for both students and teachers to wear masks.
In oder to gather data for this study, researchers gave 1,733 US adults an online survey in December 2021 about their experiences during COVID-19.
The survey asked parents about seven different types of behaviors that involved misrepresentation and nonadherence to public health measures during the pandemic, and whether or not they had had done them.
The final analysis included 580 parents who had children under the age of 18 living with them during the pandemic.
According to the study, the most common behaviors that participants reported doing during the pandemic were “not telling someone who was with their child that they thought or knew their child had COVID-19” (24%), and “allowing their child to break quarantine rules,” (21.1%).
“Our findings suggest a serious public health challenge in the immediate context of the COVID-19 pandemic, including future waves affecting weary parents, as well as future infectious disease outbreaks,” the study’s authors wrote.
For those who admitted to bending the pandemic rules for their children, the most common reason for doing so was because they wanted to “exercise their personal freedom as a parent.”
Other reasons included wanting their children to be able to live a “normal” life as they had before the pandemic, or if they had work commitments and other responsibilities that they could not skip.
The study’s findings also revealed that parents had an increase in stress due to these pandemic health measures — school closings and quarantine rules for kids — than compared to those without children.
However, the study had some limitations, including the possibility that some parents underreported their behaviors, which would have affected its results.
“Further work is needed to identify groups at highest risk of misrepresentation and nonadherence, to address parents’ concerns that were identified as reasons for these behaviors (eg, desire for autonomy), and to implement better support mechanisms for parents (eg, paid sick leave for family illness) during such crises so that misrepresentation and nonadherence feel less necessary,” according to the study.