For now, as far as rent and food, she is OK because her boyfriend is still working. He has a job at an Amazon warehouse. But they are nervous about his safety.

“There are all these new people who got hired when the restaurants shut down,” she said. “He can work overtime but he says he’s scared. He doesn’t want to be in the warehouse with all those people and get it and bring it home and give it to me. Yes, we could use the money but you can’t risk it.”

Young parents said they now understood the extreme stress their parents experienced when they had been laid off, a mood they mistook as just another bout of grown-up grumpiness.

Nawaz Haraish, 26, said that when his mother lost her job in 2012 she was suddenly home all day and “super stressed” all the time.

He understands her now. Last week Mr. Haraish lost his job as a curbside assistance worker at Terminal 4 of John F. Kennedy Airport. He is deeply worried about providing for his daughters, ages 2 and 4, whom he called “my two sweethearts.” He said his first destination after leaving the airport the day he was let go was the store, to buy diapers and wipes.

“I’m hoping the unemployment money will start coming in,” said Mr. Haraish, who lives in Richmond Hill, Queens. He said he sometimes watched YouTube videos as a distraction. One was about how to cope with anxiety. “Other than that I can’t tell you. I don’t really have a plan right now. I am super worried. But I’m trying not to let anxiety ruin me. I have my daughters. And they need a sane father.”

His mother, he said, never quite recovered.

“You can see it in her face,” he said. “She has a stressed-looking face, like she’s been through a lot.”

Sabrina Tavernise reported from Washington; Audra D.S. Burch from Miami; Sarah Mervosh from Canton, Ohio; and Campbell Robertson from Pittsburgh.