The Family Stress Model during the COVID-19 quarantine

• In Event: Vulnerable Children and Families in COVID-19: Risks and Resilience

Abstract

The Family Stress Model (FSM; Conger et al., 1994) posits that children’s psychological health is indirectly negatively affected by their family’s financial struggles. FSM predicts that as economic pressure increases, so too will parental psychological distress, which has a downstream impact on children’s psychological well-being. As the United States faces nationwide economic hardship due to the COVID-19 pandemic, FSM emerges as an especially germane theory to explain likely disruptions in children’s psychological health. Families were recruited to complete a battery of online questionnaires regarding their early experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic. 388 parents answered questions regarding their financial experiences during COVID-19, as well questions about theirs and their children’s mental health. Children (M age = 10.69 years, SD = 2.31 years; range = 8-17 years old) also answered questions about their own mental health. The FSM was tested by examining a mediation model with regression analyses. Specifically, children’s psychological distress was regressed on parent’s reported COVID-related economic hardship, controlling for baseline income. Next, parental depressive symptoms were added as a potential mediator of this relationship.

COVID-related economic hardship had a direct effect on children’s distress (β=0.127, p<.05), after controlling for differences in children’s sex, race, age, and family income. COVID-related economic hardship also predicted parent’s depressive symptoms (β=0.110, p<.05), controlling for the same covariates. Further, parent’s depressive symptoms predicted children’s distress (β=0.728, p<.001), over and above covariates. Finally, the indirect effect of COVID-related economic hardship on children’s distress through parent’s depressive symptoms was tested, and the effect of COVID-related economic hardship on children’s distress was reduced to a non-significant effect (β= 0.048, ns). Results from a Sobel test of mediation suggested that parent’s depressive symptoms fully mediated the effect of COVID-related economic hardship on children’s distress (z = 2.049, p<.05). Children’s depressive and anxiety symptoms were not directly affected by negative financial events due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a finding that is consistent with the Family Stress Model. Rather, it is through their parents’ distress, notably depressive symptoms, that economic hardship affects children’s distress. Controlling for meaningful demographic differences did not reduce this effect, nor did utilizing a factor constructed from both parent- and self-report of children’s symptoms. Future analyses will assess the influence of parent’s sex as a possible moderator of this mediation, given recent findings that mothers and fathers may experience caregiver burden and pandemic-related economic troubles differently (e.g., Russell et al., 2020).

Authors

• Lauren Aaron, University of New Orleans
  Presenting Author

• David Brabham, University of New Orleans
  Non-Presenting Author

• Rachel M Kaplan, University of New Orleans
  Non-Presenting Author

• Miranda L Evans, University of New Orleans
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sarah Black, University of New Orleans
  Non-Presenting Author