The availability of childcare services eases parents’ daily lives and research has shown that it positively affects well-being, especially for mothers. However, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted established childcare arrangements, with school and day care closures adding to parental burdens. Despite extensive discourse on the influence of these closures on parental well-being, few studies have empirically analysed the effects of the increase in childcare responsibilities associated with the closures on the well-being of parents. We seek to address this gap by examining the impact of school and day care reopenings on parental well-being. We expect that parents’ life satisfaction will increase when schools and day care facilities are reopened—and that this effect is particularly strong for mothers. Leveraging the variation in the time of reopenings across Germany’s federal states, we employ a difference-in-differences and a difference-in-difference-in-differences approach to assess changes in well-being. The research design accounts for state-level differences and potential confounding factors related to the pandemic. By using data from the German IAB-HOPP study, which offers timely measures of life satisfaction, we aim to quantify the effects of reopenings on parental well-being. Results show only a small and marginally positive effect of reopenings on average life satisfaction among parents. However, this is due to a strong and significant effect of reopenings on mothers’ life satisfaction and no significant effect for fathers. Our findings contribute to research on the division of unpaid labour and childcare and support the notion that public childcare provision is crucial, particularly for mothers’ life satisfaction.

托儿服务的提供使父母的日常生活更加轻松，研究表明，它对幸福感有积极影响，尤其是对母亲来说。然而，COVID-19 大流行打乱了既定的托儿安排，学校和日托中心的关闭增加了父母的负担。尽管对这些关闭对父母福祉的影响进行了广泛的讨论，但很少有研究实证分析了与关闭相关的育儿责任增加对父母福祉的影响。我们试图通过研究学校和日托重新开放对父母福祉的影响来解决这一差距。我们预计，当学校和托儿所重新开放时，父母的生活满意度将得到提高，而这种影响对母亲来说尤其强烈。利用德国各联邦州重新开放时间的变化，我们采用双重差分法和双重差分法来评估福祉的变化。研究设计考虑了州一级的差异和与大流行相关的潜在混杂因素。通过使用德国 IAB-HOPP 研究的数据，该研究提供了及时的生活满意度衡量标准，我们旨在量化重新开放对父母幸福感的影响。结果显示，重新开放对父母的平均生活满意度只有很小且略有积极的影响。然而，这是由于重新开放对母亲的生活满意度产生了强烈而显着的影响，而对父亲没有显着影响。我们的研究结果有助于对无偿劳动和儿童保育分工的研究，并支持公共托儿服务至关重要的观点，特别是对于母亲的生活满意度。