Parental Mentalizing Under Stress: COVID-19 and Parents’ Use of Mental State Language on Parenting Social Media

• In Event: Parenting and Children’s Socioemotional Adjustment During COVID-19 Through a Multi-Level Ecological Systems Perspective

Abstract

Introduction. Parental mentalization, parents’ proclivity to reflect on their children’s and their own mental states, has been associated with a host of positive parenting and child outcomes (e.g., McMahon & Bernier, 2017). Stress is thought to dampen mentalizing (Luyten & Fonagy, 2015), but little empirical work has tested the effects of stress on parental mentalization. Here we examine the effect of the COVID-19 lockdown, a stressful period for parents associated with increased caregiving demands, anxiety, and distress (Cameron et al., 2020; Gassman-Pines et al., 2020), on parental mentalization. Specifically, the effect of COVID-19 on mentalization was investigated through parents’ discussions on social media. Despite increased use of online platforms among parents, and the high interest in parental mentalization in community intervention programs, little is known regarding parents’ proclivity to publicly discuss mental states in the context of child-rearing online. This is the first study to examine parental mentalization on social media, focusing on spontaneous use of mental state language (MSL).
Hypotheses. We hypothesized that parenting-related social media content posted during COVID-19 will contain lower levels of MSL compared to content published in less-stressful periods. As exploratory aims, differences between mothers and fathers in MSL and content-driven differences in use of mental state terms were examined.
Methods. Posts published on 20 parenting-related Reddit forums (subreddits) during March-April 2020 (COVID-19 lockdown; N = 20,613) and 2019 (control period; N = 16,738) were sampled. A mental states dictionary containing 364 terms referring to emotions and cognitive states (but not their behavioral manifestations) was devised, and a document feature matrix was created to map usage of each term in each post. The sum of mental state words in each post was used to measure MSL.
Results. On average, posts contained 6.39 mental state words (SD = 9.70). A negative-binomial general linear model predicting MSL by year, controlling for total word count, revealed that content posted during COVID-19 contained lower MSL compared to the control period (t = -2.80, p = .005). To examine gender differences, the gender identity of the subreddits’ primary audiences (mothers, fathers, both) was added to the model, revealing a Gender effect (χ2(2) = 79, p < .001), qualified by a Gender by Year interaction (χ2(2) = 6, p = .049). Post-hoc analyses (Figure 1) indicated that paternal and general parenting (both mothers and fathers) subreddits contained lower MSL during COVID-19 than during the control period; this effect was not evident in maternal subreddits. Finally, an exploratory relative frequency (keyness) analysis was conducted to examine whether specific mental state terms drive differences between content posted during COVID-19 and the control period (Figure 2). Highlighting the distress associated with COVID-19, parents referred more to the mental state “stress” and less to the mental state “happy,” although some negative states were more prevalent during the control period.
Conclusion. MSL generally decreased during COVID-19, supporting the hypothesis that stress dampens parental mentalization. Exploratory findings suggest that this decrease may vary by gender. Findings highlight the utility of studying parenting through the use of social media.

Authors

• Tal Yatziv, Yale University
  Presenting Author

• Almog Simchon, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
  Non-Presenting Author

• Nicholas Manco, Yale Child Study Center
  Non-Presenting Author

• Michael Gilead, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
  Non-Presenting Author

• Helena JV Rutherford, Yale University
  Non-Presenting Author