Parents accustomed to home schooling felt more resilient during the COVID-19 pandemic than those whose public-school children were suddenly housebound, according to a new study.

The finding was particularly true for home-schooling parents who stayed physically active. But those who experienced increased stress because students were at home—and whose workout regimens suffered—likely had a different experience.

For the study, researchers polled 123 parents of school-age youth in 2020. They found the type of schooling students received pre-pandemic had a direct impact upon parents’ perceived resilience.

“We knew the importance of physical activity to promote physical health benefits like disease prevention and weight management and even mental health benefits like reduced risk of depression and anxiety,” says lead author Laura Kabiri, assistant teaching professor and sports medicine adviser at Rice University.

“However, we now also know that public-school parents who did not get enough physical activity during COVID-19 also perceived themselves as significantly less resilient.”

The rise in stress on parents suddenly working from and teaching their children at home has been a recurring theme of the pandemic, notes Kabiri, but nobody to date had quantified how resilient they felt themselves to be.

“Psychological resilience can be defined different ways,” she says. “Generally, resilience helps individuals handle challenging situations in a constructive way and find and access resources that promote their own well-being. This resilience was especially important for parents during the prolonged stress of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The study notes COVID-19 increased the number of home-schooled children in the United States from 2.5 million to as many as 5 million by January 2021. That number does not include the millions more who attended virtual public-school classes from home.

Read the full article about parents in COVID-19 by Mike Williams at Futurity.