Maternal harsh parenting during COVID-19 in Italy, The Netherlands, and China: a cross-validation study

• In Event: Poster Session 02
  In Poster Session: PS 02 Topic - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic drastically impacted on family life and may have caused parental distress, which in turn may result in an overreliance on less effective parenting practices. The aim of the current study was to identify risk and protective factors associated with impaired parenting during the COVID-19 lockdown. Key factors predicting maternal harsh discipline were examined in China, Italy, and The Netherlands, using a cross-validation approach (de Rooij & Weeda, 2020), with a particular focus on the role of allomaternal support from father and grandparents as a protective factor in predicting maternal harshness.
The sample consisted of 900 Dutch, 641 Italian, and 922 Chinese mothers (total sample age M= 36.74, SD = 5.58) who completed an online questionnaire during the lockdown. Timeframes for data collection were: April 17 – May 10 for The Netherlands, April 21 – June 13 for Italy, and April 21 – April 28 for China. During these timeframes, governmental pandemic measures in the three countries included: remote working, keeping social distance from others, and closures of schools and daycare centers. The Parent-Child Conflict Tactics Scale (CTSPC) (Straus, Hamby, Finkelhor, Moore, & Runyan, 1998) was administered in order to assess maternal harsh disciplinary style.
Although marital conflict and psychopathology were shared risk factors predicting maternal harsh parenting in each of the three countries, cross-validation identified a unique risk factor model for each country, see Table 1. In The Netherlands and China, but not in Italy, work-related stressors were considered risk factors. In China, support from father and (coresidential) grandparents for mothers with a young child were protective factors.
To determine the cross-cultural predictive validity of each country’s winning model, a second cross-validation analysis was conducted, evaluating the predictive performance of each winning model when predicting harsh parenting in the data of the other countries. The resulting prediction error distributions showed that the Dutch and Italian models are very poor in predicting harsh parenting in China. In contrast, the overlapping distributions of the Dutch and Italian models in the Italian data suggests that the Dutch predictors can reasonably well predict harsh care of Italian mothers.
Our results indicate that the constellation of factors predicting maternal harsh parenting during COVID-19 is not identical across countries, possibly due to cultural variations in allomaternal support from fathers and grandparents. This information will be highly valuable for the identification of at-risk families during future pandemics. Our findings show that shared childrearing can buffer against risks for harsh parenting during COVID-19. Hence, adopting approaches to build a pandemic-proof community of care and strengthening networks of support inside and outside the family unit may help at-risk parents during future pandemics.

Authors

• Madelon Riem, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen
  Presenting Author

• Paul Lodder, Tilburg University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jing Guo
  Non-Presenting Author

• Michelle Vrielink-Verpaalen, Other
  Non-Presenting Author

• Marinus H. van IJzendoorn, University College London (UCL)
  Non-Presenting Author

• Marian J Bakermans-Kranenburg, ISPA Lisbon
  Non-Presenting Author

• Pietro De Carli
  Non-Presenting Author