Perceived stress and emotion regulation associations with adolescent-parent relationships during COVID-19

• In Event: Poster Session 04
  In Poster Session: PS 04 Topic - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Abstract

Introduction:
Adolescence is a developmental period associated with an increase in adolescent-parent conflict driven by the normative individuation process, and developing emotion regulation capabilities (Branje et al., 2013; Zimmermann & Iwanski, 2014). Increased family conflict during adolescence has implications for greater challenges in emotion regulation, social and emotional wellbeing, depressed mood, and the development of later alcohol and substance use disorders (Chan et al., 2013; Ohannessian, 2013; Ohannessian et al., 2016; Pesola et al., 2015). Parents’ response to community-wide stressful situations, such as the current COVID-19 pandemic, plays an important role in adolescent’s stress responses (Kliewer et al., 1994), as parents’ are a crucial source of coping socialization. Following the attacks on 9/11, evidence found greater parent-adolescent conflict was positively associated with adolescents’ distress and negative affect (Gil-Rivas et al., 2004). The current study examined how parent and adolescent stress, and adolescent emotion regulation capabilities predicted adolescent-parent relationship conflict.

Methods: Data were collected through a national, online survey from April 27-28, 2020, five weeks after the first US quarantines began, and when schools nationwide made the decision to continue distance learning for the remainder of the school year. 437 caregiver responses were received, of whom 108 were caregivers of adolescents ages 12 to 18 (63% female; mean age=43.11; 17.6% racial/ethnic minority). Caregivers responded to questions focused on their experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic for their own perceived stress and the perceived stress of their child (via the Perceived Stress Scale; Cohen et al., 1983), their parent-child relationship conflict (via the Child-Parent Relationship Scale; Driscoll & Pianta, 2011), and their children’s emotion regulation capabilities (via the Emotion Regulation Checklist; Shields & Cicchetti, 1997).

Results: Based upon reported cutoffs for the key variables of interest, mean scores indicate parents’ own stress and their perceived child stress were reported as moderately stressful. All other key variables of interest were in the moderate range, given median scores on summed scales where higher scores indicate greater presence of emotion regulation capability, negative emotionality, and child-parent relationship conflict. Bivariate correlations indicated strong associations between child-parent relationship conflict and their own stress, their perceived child stress, and their children’s negative and positive emotion regulation capabilities (rs = .53, .75, .85, and -.68, p<.01, respectfully, see Table 1). Stepwise regressions predicting child-parent relationship conflict, controlling for parent gender and age, indicate approximately 75% of the variance in child-parent conflict was explained (See Table 2).

Discussion: Adolescents’ negativity – a measure of dysregulated emotion - played the largest role in child-parent relationship quality during the early peak of COVID-19, followed by perceptions of children’s stress. Interestingly, parents’ reports of their own stress were less potent, perhaps because of the normative process of individuation between adolescents and their parents during this developmental period. Parents in this sample reports moderate stress for themselves, and perceived moderate, nearing high stress in their adolescents. Implications for the role parents play in supporting adolescents’ adaptive management of stress during crises to bolster adolescent emotion regulation are presented, including practical suggestions for developmentally appropriate coping activities.

Authors

• Morica Hutchison, University of Connecticut
  Presenting Author

• Beth S Russell, University of Connecticut
  Non-Presenting Author

• Rachel Tambling, University of Connecticut
  Non-Presenting Author