Coronavirus Poll: 9 in 10 Children Experiencing ‘Enjoyment,’ ‘Happiness’ at Home with Family

Children may be benefiting from the stay-at-home orders many states have in place during the coronavirus outbreak in the United States. According to a Gallup poll, a large majority of children report “enjoyment” and “happiness” while spending their days with their families.

Gallup reported on its survey of 1,039 U.S. adults who are parents of children under the age of 18:

Close to nine in 10 parents of children under the age of 18 say their children experienced enjoyment (89 percent) and happiness (88 percent) “during a lot of the day” prior to the day they were interviewed. However, with many children receiving distance learning or being home-schooled for part of the day rather than attending school, 65 percent of parents report their children are experiencing boredom.

Five other emotions — all negative — are currently far less common among children, including worry (26 percent), stress (24 percent), anger (24 percent), sadness (20 percent) and loneliness (20 percent).

Stress and worry are largely confined to parents — roughly seven in 10 parents report feeling these emotions themselves, each by at least 40 percentage points higher than the comparable percentage among children.

Gallup noted that parents also reported feeling enjoyment or happiness but not as much as their children. But children also were more likely than their parents to be bored.

The Gallup poll was conducted March 24-27 of adults who are members of the Gallup Panel using random sampling. 

The methodology portion of the poll said:

Gallup weighted the obtained samples to correct for nonresponse. Nonresponse adjustments were made by adjusting the sample to match the national demographics of gender, age, race, Hispanic ethnicity, education and region. Demographic weighting targets were based on the most recent Current Population Survey figures for the aged 18 and older U.S. population.

“For results based on any individual sample, the margin of sampling error is plus or minus 6 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level. Margins of error for subgroups are higher.”

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