The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on families and children’s externalizing psychopathology

• In Event: The Pandemic and the Mental Health of Parents and Children Across Pregnancy, Infancy, and Childhood

Abstract

Background. Parenting influences both adaptive and maladaptive patterns of child development. Extant research, including genetically-informed studies, show that parental harshness (e.g., physically/verbally punitive) and low parental warmth (e.g., lack of affection and nurturance) predict risk for child conduct problems (CP) and callous-unemotional (CU) traits (i.e., low empathy, guilt, and prosociality) (Waller & Hyde, 2018), with the presence of CU traits conferring substantial additional risk for more severe CP (Frick et al., 2014). However, influences on children’s mental health extend across multiple levels, including broader family systems and the contexts in which the family functions (Sameroff, 2010). Since early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has thrust a host of stressors onto families, with implications for child development and mental health. However, studies have yet to explore associations between family exposure to and worries about COVID-19, parenting practices, and child CP and CU traits.

Methods. We conducted a study of 303 parents (biological mothers=92.4%) and children aged 3.00 to 10.94 years old (Mage=6.43; SD=2.13; 51.8% female) from two Northeast cities in the United States who were evaluated during a period with high community transmission and stay-at-home orders due to COVID-19. Parents reported their level of COVID-19 exposures (e.g., being exposed, losing job, being tested) and worries (e.g., contracting or dying from the virus, family members getting sick). Reports of parental warmth and harshness were assessed using the Alabama Parenting Questionnaire (Essau et al., 2006) and the over-reactivity subscale of the Parenting Scale (Arnold et al., 1996). Children’s CP and CU traits were assessed using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (Goodman, 1997) and Inventory of Callous-Unemotional Traits (Frick, 2004). Data were explored using regression analyses within a structural equation modeling framework, incorporating relevant demographic covariates.

Results. Overall, parents were most worried about a family member getting the virus (Figure 1), and parents with a high school qualification or less were more likely to have experienced disruptions to work or income due to COVID-19 (β=-0.15, p<.05). Black parents (β=0.17, p<.05), Hispanic parents (β=0.17, p<.05), and parents with lower monthly household incomes (β=-0.11, p<.05) reported more worry about currently having symptoms of COVID-19. While parent reports of COVID-19 exposures were not independently related to child CP or CU traits, higher parental COVID-19 worry scores predicted higher child CP (β=0.15, p<0.01), but not CU traits, over and above parenting practices and covariates (Table 1). In post-hoc models testing individual parent worries, we found that parental worries about themselves contracting COVID-19 (β=0.14, p<0.01) or a family member contracting COVID-19 (β=0.14, p<0.01) were independently related to higher child CP.

Discussion. Our findings add to a growing literature demonstrating the enormous burden that the pandemic has placed on families. The results speak to the continued importance of targeting parenting practices to reduce child CP and CU traits even as families contend with the continued, pervasive stress imbued by the pandemic.

Authors

• Nicholas James Wagner, Boston University
  Presenting Author

• Tralucia Powell, Boston University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Yuheiry Rodriguez, University of Pennsylvania
  Non-Presenting Author

• Natalie Corbett, University of Pennsylvania
  Non-Presenting Author

• Samantha Conte Perlstein, University of Pennsylvania
  Non-Presenting Author

• Lauren White, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ran Barzilay, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
  Non-Presenting Author

• Rebecca Waller, University of Pennsylvania
  Non-Presenting Author