Parenting in Israel during COVID-19: The protective role of Mentalization and Emotion Regulation

• In Event: Poster Session 07
  In Poster Session: PS 07 Topic - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Abstract

Background: The global COVID-19 pandemic changed the life of numerous parents. In Israel, due to government-enforced lockdowns, many parents were no longer able to maintain their jobs while caring 24/7 for their children. The elevation in parenting burden and stress, increased the risk that parents will become less available to their children and will increase harsh and coercive parenting. The ability of parents to manage the emotional stress during COVID-19 stands at the heart of this study. Using parenting data collected before and after the pandemic broke out, we were interested in assessing the relationship between the situational anxiety and parenting, and to examine the role of parental mentalization and emotion regulation as possible protective mechanisms. We hypothesized that while anxiety can have negative impact on parenting, parents that have higher capacity to regulate negative affect and are more capable of thinking about their children's mental states, will exhibit less negative and more positive parenting behaviors.
Method: Seventy parents of school-age children participated in the study that was part of a longitudinal study on parenting. During the 1st wave collected before COVID-19, we assessed parental capacity for mentalization (PRFQ; Luyten, Mayes, Nijssens & Fonagy, 2017), and parental capacity for emotion regulation (DERS; Gratz & Roemer, 2004). During the 2nd phase, parents were asked to report on their situational anxiety (STAI; Spielberger,2010) and parenting (MAPS; Parent & Forehand, 2017).
Results: A stepwise regression was conducted to investigate whether parental state anxiety, parental mentalization and parental emotion regulation could significantly predict negative and positive parenting. For negative parenting, the results indicated a significant model F(3,65) = 10.91, p < .001, with state anxiety contributed significantly to the regression model (β = .34, p < .01). Parental mentalization (β = -.26, p < .05) and emotion regulation (β = -.39, p < .01), were significant predictors as well. For positive parenting, the analysis revealed a significant model F(3,65) = 6.23, p < .001, with state anxiety contributed significantly to the regression model (β = -.25, p < .05(. Additional, Parental mentalization (β = .35, p < .01) and emotion regulation (β = -.22, p = .06) found to be significant predictors. In both regression models, when all three independent variables were included, state anxiety was no longer a significant predictor of parental behaviors. Indicating the possibility that the relation between anxiety and parental behaviors can be explained through the quality of parental capacity for mentalization and emotion regulation. Furthermore, the results show that while the important predictor for negative parenting is emotion regulation, for positive parenting it is the parental mentalization.
Conclusions: the results of the study emphasize the role played by the parents' abilities for mentalization and emotion regulation in times of pandemic characterized by elevated parenting burden and stress. In particular, the results demonstrate that the ability of parents to regulate effectively their stress can mitigate the extent of negative parenting.

Authors

• Racheli Cohen, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
  Presenting Author

• Nada Yassin, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
  Non-Presenting Author

• Naama Gershy, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
  Non-Presenting Author