As of July 2020, over 10 million people have been infected by the COVID-19 virus and the pandemic has resulted in over half a million deaths around the world. These numbers are certain to continue increasing over time. The impact of the virus itself and measures deployed to reduce the transmission of the disease have already had dramatic impacts on the lives of children all over the world and some of the necessary public health measures to contain the pandemic are perpetuating inequalities. For example, while school closures have affected over 1.4 billion students globally, the pandemic has disproportionately affected children from certain groups. Children from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, those with additional health and/or special needs, those with limited access to digital resources, those from families in which there are mental health and addiction issues, and those from low- and middle- income countries have been the most impacted. There is also considerable intersectionality between the pandemic’s impact on child development and issues of structural inequality and racism in many countries. Further, increases in family conflict, domestic violence and child maltreatment, and job loss leading to poverty have been documented worldwide.
Although there may be commonality in the effects on children across geographies, we know that the public health strategies taken by countries to reduce transmission are likely to be driven by locally contextual aspects such as cultural norms, laws, and resources (human, technical, infrastructural, and financial). Within the field of child development and in related disciplines, researchers were quick to respond to the pandemic by gathering data via a number of innovative methodologies. As a result, there is a rapidly emerging body of empirical research documenting the impact of COVID-19 on children around the world and the effectiveness of a range of intervention strategies to support child development during these exceptional times.
We invite submission of manuscripts based on original, empirical studies of the impact of the pandemic on children, youth, and families, and on efforts to mitigate the effects of the pandemic on children. We welcome papers that espouse an explicit developmental framework and that deploy quantitative, qualitative, or mixed method approaches to elucidate mechanisms of COVID-19’s impact on child development; please note, however, that we are not targeting papers that are exclusively reviews of the literature or concept papers. We also enthusiastically welcome submissions from populations that are underrepresented in the mainstream child development literature.
