Survey: Parents Have Been Less Strict About House Rules Amid the Pandemic

The coronavirus pandemic has upended so many parts of our lives, including the amount of time we’ve been spending at home together with our families, and new survey found that U.S. parents have been less strict about some of the house rules they’d had, with 75 percent saying having everyone home more often has led them to relax some of the rules. The top eased rules named in the OnePoll survey for Bissell Homecare include: no eating in front of the TV (37 percent); no staying up past bedtime (27 percent); not leaving wet towels or dirty clothes on the floor (24 percent); and not using your phone at the dinner table (23 percent). But there have been some new rules added since the pandemic began, including: wash your hands as soon as you walk in the door (59 percent); clean doorknobs and other high-contact surfaces regularly (49 percent); shower when returning home from a highly-populated area (48 percent); and wipe packages down before opening (43 percent).

YOUR TURN:

• If you’re a parent of school-age children, have you been less strict since the pandemic began about some of the house rules you’d had before? If so, which and why?
• Have you added new house rules amid the pandemic? If so, what are they?
• Have you liked having the whole family home more, or is it something you liked at first, but now have gotten over and would like to return to your old routine?
• What kind of family routine changes have you made during the pandemic that you think you’ll keep once it’s over?