How can we support NZ families as we potentially head into another lockdown situation? Some key findings and lessons from our Alert Level 4 lockdown survey on family life: a thread 1/n #COVID19 #nzlockdown @VicUniWgtn

Good news: family wellbeing—on the whole—remained resilient during lockdown. There were no declines in partner support or parental role satisfaction *in the aggregate.* 2/n

Bad news: some groups struggled. Those who lost their jobs (or whose partner lost their job) or income during lockdown reported feeling less supported by their partner. 3/n

Mothers of young children experienced large increases in their family time demands. They reported more negative feelings, less positive feelings, compared to other parents and non-parents. They also reported declines in how they felt they were doing as a parent 4/n

Working mothers of young children were hit hardest. Anecdotally, these mothers reported being told by their supervisors to do whatever they needed to put their family first. The data said something different: mothers did not experience any decline in their work demands 5/n

Dads: Make sure you’re doing your share. Normalise your caregiving by talking about your family responsibilities with your colleagues. This is particularly important if you have supervise or manage other dads (see next tweet). 6/n

Managers/supervisors: working at home and caring for children at the same time is tough. How do your work expectations align with the time demands of caring for children? Reassess timelines, shift responsibilities, don’t expect people to be on-call 7/n

Have faith—mums find a way to get it done. Don’t add to the stress 8/n

Policy: Protect jobs. The wage subsidy was a wellbeing success. Those in our survey who stayed employed but couldn’t work (probably those whose employers received the wage subsidy) reported no change in family wellbeing. Worrying about your job makes lockdown untenable 9/n

Public health brains: This may be controversial, but can we think more creatively about bubbles but still be safe? Can we explicitly say that families with children can form a support bubble? Some families did this anyway. Give families a pragmatic way to navigate this. 10/end

Preliminary working paper with our results can be found here: https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/1865512/WP-20-03-covid-19-life-in-lockdown.pdf