Evaluating Family Vulnerability and Disruption during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Implications for Child Adjustment

• In Event: Effects of COVID-19 and the Pandemic Response on Families, Caregivers, and Children

Abstract

Community strategies to reduce COVID-19 disease transmission, involving school, childcare, and public recreation area closures placed tremendous burden on families to accommodate new demands for childcare and distance education, while caregivers also cope with challenges of working from home, changes to work schedules, furloughs, or even job loss. In this study, we evaluated two hypotheses regarding the role of family-level cohesion, conflict, and routines, as well as harsh, lax, and warm parenting practices for children’s post-COVID psychological adjustment. We tested a family vulnerabilities hypothesis, in which families already challenged with poor family relationship quality or lower-quality parenting prior to COVID-19 would be at elevated risk for child maladjustment during COVID-19. We also tested a family disruption hypothesis, which posits that the degree to which family functioning and parenting quality diminish from pre- to post-COVID-19 may predict subsequent child maladjustment during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our data included pre-COVID assessments as well as two post-COVID assessments in May to capture family and child family functioning during the pandemic.
We analyzed data from 204 families that were participating in a larger, intergenerational study prior to COVID-19. Children (45.1% girls) were an average of 4 years old. Caregivers (MAge = 27.43, SDAge = 1.67) identified primarily as the child’s mother (70.6%) or father (22.5%). Median family annual income was $50,000 – 59,999. Prior to COVID-19, the original study conducted in-home assessments with families; post-COVID-19, 15-minute web surveys were sent to caregivers every two weeks starting May 8. Family measures included family-level cohesion, conflict, and routines, harsh, lax, and warm parenting. Children’s internalizing and externalizing were measured using the CBCL at pre-COVID, and a brief assessment in the post-COVID surveys. We include parents’ emotional distress (depression, anxiety), financial strain, and time lapse between pre- and post-COVID assessments as covariates. All measures yielded good reliability.
Six separate structural models were computed to test the family vulnerability (“a” pathways) and family disruption (“b” pathways) hypotheses for children’s internalizing and externalizing problems (see Figure 1). Latent change scores (Grimm, Ram, & Estabrook, 2017) were calculated to model intra-family change from pre- to post-COVID-19 assessments to capture family disruption. Table 1 reports coefficients for all six structural equation models. All models yielded satisfactory fit with the data. Few findings supported the family vulnerability hypothesis: only pre-COVID harsh parenting was positively associated with children’s post-COVID internalizing problems. However, several findings supported the family disruption hypothesis.
Decreases in family cohesion were associated with increases in internalizing problems. Increases in family conflict were associated with increased risk for both internalizing and externalizing problems. Disruptions in family routines were not associated with children’s maladjustment. In the parenting domain, increases in harsh parenting and in lax parenting each were associated with elevated risk for internalizing and externalizing problems; however, changes in parental warmth did not predict children’s adjustment.
These findings highlight the role of disruption to family relationship quality – family cohesion and conflict – as well as parenting quality – harshness and laxness – as key pathways to child adjustment during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Authors

• Gregory M Fosco, Pennsylvania State University, University Park
  Presenting Author

• Carlie Sloan, Pennsylvania State University, University Park
  Non-Presenting Author

• Shichen Fang, Concordia University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Mark E. Feinberg, Pennsylvania State University, University Park
  Non-Presenting Author