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COVID-19 led to substantial increases in parents’ stress due partially to the challenges of home education. The highly politicized decision to reopen schools in-person in Fall 2020, nevertheless, was not associated with reductions in parents’ stress. Using a stress process perspective, we argue that the association of school modality with parents’ stress in Fall 2020 likely depended on parents’ COVID concerns. Analysis of survey data from November 2020 shows that incompatibility between parents’ COVID concerns and children’s school modalities were associated with greater stress. Parents with no concerns reported the lowest stress when children learned in-person and the highest stress when children were mandated to learn virtually. Among parents with COVID concerns, the opposite was true. Because few parents expressed no COVID concerns, in-person learning was more often associated with higher stress than lower stress, helping explain why school reopening did not markedly improve U.S. parents’ mental health. 

COVID-19 led to substantial increases in parents’ stress due partially to the challenges of home education. The highly politicized decision to reopen schools in person in fall 2020, nevertheless, was not associated with reductions in parents’ stress. Using a stress process perspective, we argue that the association of school modality with parents’ stress in fall 2020 likely depended on parents’ COVID concerns. Analysis of survey data from November 2020 shows that incompatibility between parents’ COVID concerns and children’s school modalities were associated with greater stress. Parents with no concerns reported the lowest stress when children learned in person and the highest stress when children were mandated to learn virtually. Among parents with COVID concerns, the opposite was true. Because few parents expressed no COVID concerns, in-person learning was more often associated with higher stress than lower stress, helping explain why school reopening did not markedly improve U.S. parents’ mental health.