Parents’ COVID-19 Stress and Child Behavior: Examining Moderated-Mediation of Children’s School Return and Harsh Parenting

• In Event: Poster Session 05
  In Poster Session: PS 05 Topic - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Abstract

Since the onset of the stay-at-home orders across the United States related to the COVID-19 pandemic in mid-March of this year, parents have reported significantly higher stress related to the virus than non-parents (APA, 2020). As cities and states across the country are gradually shifting back to “normal” (e.g., stay-at-home orders lifting, restaurant capacities increasing, schools and childcare facilities reopening), it is likely that COVID-19-related stress is shifting as well. For parents, this unprecedented type of stress may manifest in the ways that they discipline their children. An abundance of literature has demonstrated the relationship between harsh discipline and child difficulties, an association that may be further complicated by the return to in-person school or childcare in midst of a pandemic. The current study examines the change in parents’ use of harsh discipline from pre-pandemic to present (i.e., more, less, or same) as a mediator between parents’ COVID-19-related stress and child behavior problems. The potential moderating role of child’s return to in-person school or childcare among these paths is also considered (see Figure 1).
Data will be obtained from self-report surveys of parents with 2- to 4-year-old children. Data collection is ongoing; as of 9/28/20, 62 parents (87% female; 84% white) across 14 states have enrolled in the study. The total sample size will be 200 by the time of analysis. The survey consists of information regarding the child’s return to in-person schools or childcare in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic along with measures of parent stress related to COVID-19 (APA, 2020), harsh parenting (Straus et al., 1998), and child behavior problems (Goodman et al., 2010).
Structural equation modeling will be used to examine the aims of this study and will include covariates for child sex, child age, parent sex, and parent race and ethnicity. We hypothesize that high levels of COVID-19-related stress in parents will predict more harsh discipline behaviors than pre-pandemic and that this will, in turn, lead to more child behavior problems. We also hypothesize that children’s return to in-person school or childcare will moderate the A and B paths of this mediation model. Parents’ COVID-19 related stress may be either exacerbated or alleviated by their children’s return to school and could affect their disciplinary practices accordingly, while in-person schooling may also serve as a buffer to harsh disciplinary practices.
Child well-being has been at the forefront of many national conversations regarding the return to in-person schooling during the COVID-19 pandemic. Identifying the ways in which pandemic-related parent stress may manifest as harsh discipline and its subsequent impacts on young children’s behavior problems has important implications as to how we best support families in their difficult decision to return to in-person school or childcare.

Authors

• Hannah Michelle Berendzen, University of Texas at Austin
  Presenting Author

• Haley E Rough, University of Texas at Austin
  Non-Presenting Author

• Elizabeth T. Gershoff, University of Texas at Austin
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jennifer M. Barton, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Non-Presenting Author