Neglectful Parenting and Children’s Loneliness during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Mediation by Children’s Connection to School

• In Event: Poster Session 09
  In Poster Session: PS 09 Topic - Education, Schooling

Abstract

For most US youth, the COVID-19 stay-at-home orders precipitated prolonged disruptions to in-person learning and isolation from peers. Indeed, emerging research suggests youths are experiencing increased loneliness during the pandemic (Loades et al., 2020). Parent-child relationship quality influences children’s feelings of attachment to their schools, teachers, and peers, as well as children’s levels of loneliness (Hojat, 1982; Dearing, Kreider, & Weiss, 2008; Hildyard & Wolfe, 2002). In addition, youths who lack meaningful connections with school are at risk of negative outcomes, including poor peer relationships and loneliness (Chipuer, 2001). Therefore, the current study tested prospective relations among youths’ reports of parental neglect at age 12, feelings of connection to school at age 14, and loneliness during the immediate aftermath of the COVID-19 stay-at-home orders at age 15. We hypothesized that youths who reported more neglectful parenting at age 12 would experience increased loneliness during COVID-19 at age 15, and this relation would be mediated by youths’ feelings of disconnection to school at age 14.

Participants were 211 youths (42.2% female; 38.8% Latinx) drawn from an ongoing longitudinal study of child development. At wave 1 (Mage=12.25 years, SD=.35), neglectful parenting was assessed via youths’ self-report on the 6-item Indifferent/Neglectful Parenting subscale of the short-form of the Parental Acceptance-Rejection Questionnaire (Rohner, 1990). At waves 1 and 2, (Mage=14.20 years, SD=.47), youths reported their feelings of connection to school on the Feelings About School Scale (Valeski & Stipek, 2001), a 6-item scale measuring attitudes towards school, perception of academic competence, and feelings about teachers. At wave 3 (Mage=15.2 years, SD=.57), youths completed the 8-item UCLA Loneliness Scale - Revised (Russell, 1996) during an online survey in the weeks after the initial COVID-19 stay-at-home orders in Spring 2020. Analyses controlled for youths’ ethnicity-race, gender, poverty status, IQ (WPPSI; Wechsler, 2012), and pre-pandemic feelings about school and internalizing symptoms (Achenbach, 1991) at age 12.

Hayes’ (2013) PROCESS routine in SPSS 27 evaluated the mediation model depicted in Figure 1. Analyses revealed a significant indirect effect of neglectful parenting on youths’ loneliness during COVID-19 through youths’ feelings about school prior to the pandemic, such that higher reports of neglect predicted decreases in school connectedness two years later, and less connection to school predicted greater loneliness during COVID-19 (see Table 1). The direct effect from neglectful parenting to child loneliness was also significant.

Our findings suggest that youths who report neglectful parenting are at heightened risk for loneliness during the COVID-19 pandemic. Further, youths’ sense of connection with school may be an important factor explaining the association of neglectful parenting and increased child loneliness during COVID-19. Youths who reported neglectful parenting evidenced more tenuous connections to school before the pandemic, which, in turn, predicted higher loneliness scores after the COVID-19 stay-at-home orders. These findings support the application of family interventions for youth at-risk of neglect and academic interventions, such as dyadic or triadic positive education models (Seligman, 2011), to support children’s connection with school.

Authors

• Sarina Alavi, Columbia University
  Presenting Author

• Linnea Linde-Krieger, University of Arizona
  Non-Presenting Author

• Tuppett M. Yates, University of California - Riverside
  Non-Presenting Author