Home lockdown: Bloom or Boom? Effects of the COVID-19 lockdown on wellbeing of parents and children

• In Event: Parenting and Child Development in Times of COVID-19

Abstract

Whereas children are largely unaffected by COVID-19 in terms of infectious morbidity, dealing with lockdown may have negative effects on the wellbeing of children (Jiao et al., 2020). In a different light, recent reports suggested that the sudden lockdown might have positive effects for wellbeing in some families; it reduces daily hassles and stress, and could possibly facilitate parent-child bonding (Bruining et al., 2020; Masten et al., 2020). One potential mechanisms that may influence the direction of these effects may be perceived stress during the COVID-19 lockdown.

In this study, we tested the hypothesis that perceived stress might mediate COVID-19 lockdown induced changes in wellbeing of parents and children, using a longitudinal twin design. A total of 106 parents and 151 children that are enrolled in the ongoing longitudinal L-CID study (Crone et al., 2020) filled in questionnaires during COVID-19 lockdown and we combined this data with annual measures of previous five years. Specifically, we focused on parental psychological symptoms and overreactivity, and children’s internalizing and externalizing behavior.

We were able to show a significant increase in parental psychological symptoms due to COVID-19, whereas parental overreactivity showed a (non-COVID-19 related) decrease across time. Longitudinal child measures showed a gradual decrease in internalizing and externalizing behavior, which seemed decelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. In line with our hypothesis, perceived stress was a significant mediator for changes in wellbeing. That is: parents that reported more psychological symptoms prior to the lockdown experienced more stress during the lockdown, which in turn resulted in increased psychological symptoms. For parental overreactivity, we found that parents who were less reactive prior to the lockdown, experienced less stress and showed a decrease in parental reactivity during the COVID-19 lockdown. Our results further showed that the level of perceived stress in children was not related to perceived stress of their parents. It was, however, influenced by negative coping strategies, parental overreactivity and parental psychological symptoms. Twin analyses additionally showed that perceived stress was strongly heritable, while negative comping strategies we influenced by the shared environment (i.e., parents).

These results suggest that children in families with (a history of) parental psychological symptoms and overreactivity might be at risk to “boom’, i.e., show negative consequences of the COVID-19 lockdown. On the flipside of the same coin, we also showed that some families “bloom” during the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, parents and children with low perceived stress during the lockdown showed decreased parental overreactivity and decreased externalizing behavior. This is in line with recent calls to study potential positive effects of the pandemic (Bruining et al., 2020) and prior studies on resilience (Masten et al. 2020). Future studies should include after COVID-19 measures to truly investigate the long-lasting longitudinal effects of social distancing and home lockdown on the development of children and adolescents.

Authors

• Michelle Achterberg, Erasmus University Rotterdam
  Presenting Author

• Simone Dobbelaar, Leiden University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Olga D. Boer, Leiden University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Eveline A. Crone, Erasmus University
  Non-Presenting Author