Women in Germany found the Corona year 2021 to be more stressful than men.

Almost every second woman (43 percent) was afraid of falling ill in the summer a year ago, when there was no vaccine, for men it was only every third (34 percent).

Peter Philipp Schmitt

Editor in the department "Germany and the World".

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On the other hand, more men (33 percent) than women (28 percent) were worried about having to live with financial losses.

At the same time, however, women (55 percent) were much more likely to see positive aspects of the pandemic than men (48 percent) - these included less stress in their free time, the opportunity to work from home and more time for family or leisure activities in nature.

These are just some of the results of the study "Living in Crisis Mode: Families in the Corona Pandemic and Today's Challenges" by the Federal Institute for Population Research, which was presented on Tuesday.

For one of the largest studies of this kind in Germany, around 30,000 people between the ages of 18 and 49 have been surveyed since 2021 - twice a year.

At the beginning of the pandemic, parents with children were particularly stressed - especially those of primary school age.

Mothers again suffered more often than fathers from the school and daycare closures, the lack of care and home schooling.

Parents with young children are less satisfied

More than two thirds of the mothers of children between the ages of seven and ten (70 to 74 percent) stated that they were heavily burdened by their living situation, while the figure for the fathers was only around 60 percent (between 58 and 62 percent).

Socio-economic reasons also played a role: after two years of the corona pandemic, mothers had a similar level of life satisfaction as fathers in the last survey in August 2022.

However, for parents from lower-income households, it still lags behind the life satisfaction of parents with higher incomes.

Likewise, parents with less education were significantly less satisfied than parents with higher education.

Parents with children between the ages of twelve and 15 were the most satisfied in August 2022, while parents of young children were significantly less satisfied, the study continues.

Despite the strain, the results also show that having a family has strengthened many people during this crisis.

But it is not enough just to live in a partnership or family.

Rather, the decisive factor is the quality of the relationship and the cohesion in the family: "The more positive the family relationships in the partnership and with the children, the better mothers and fathers got through the pandemic."