Poster #113 - A Long COVID-19 Journey for Mothers Raising Children in Korea

• In Event: Poster Session 06

Abstract

The world is facing the unexpected ongoing challenges in our lifetime because of the outbreak of COVID-19. The impact caused by COVID-19 was demonstrated in various dimensions, such as finance, resource, and psychological health. As of August 2022, the country has been practicing a social-distancing rule, and wearing mask indoor is still mandatory as South Korea is currently experiencing its sixth peak.
Unexpected ongoing effects of COVID-19 pandemic have changed our lives. Implement social distancing is quite strict in South Korea, and we, as social animals, suffer not only because of health issues related to COVID-19 but also because of the isolation. This social isolation undermines feelings of social connection, which finally lead to detrimental effects on human beings’ physical and mental well-being (Banarjee & Rai, 2020). During time of crisis, mothers having children in early years have been facing most difficult times, since they have been physically isolated from social support for parenting: interactional social networking with intimate kinships and friendships. Moreover, maternal cognitive emotion regulation, in particular, has been impeded by the social isolation because of losing emotional control. Therefore, parenting has become more challenging and demanding, so maternal parenting stress in the current epidemic situations may be high in relation to their loneliness and lack of cognitive emotion regulation. However, the evidence on the impact of COVID-19 on daily lives for mothers raising children is scarce in the Korean context.
The aim of this study examines the association between mothers’ perceived impact of COVID-19 on daily lives and their parenting stress with a focus on the dual mediation effects of maternal loneliness and cognitive emotion regulation. In other words, COVID-19 may play role in their loneliness or cognitive emotion regulation, which finally lead to mothers’ parenting stress.
Participants were 315 mothers with children 3-5 years old in Korea. An online survey using a questionnaire was conducted during summer in 2021. All measures were reported by mothers. Children’s age and gender were considered as covariates. Data were analyzed by means of a SEM to identify the structure and relations among variables.
The findings illustrated in Figure 1. The COVID-19 impact did show a significant direct effect on their parenting stress. In addition, it had a significant indirect effect on mothers’ parental stress through their loneliness, whereas mothers’ cognitive emotion regulation did not. In other words, the results illustrated that high levels of COVID-19 impact could lead to high levels of parenting stress through the effect of their loneliness. However, the dual mediating effects of mothers’ loneliness and cognitive emotion regulation in its association between the COVID-19 impact and parental stress were not significant. Table 1 also gives the direct and indirect effects of latent variables.
This study empirically confirmed the relations among the mothers’ perceived impact of COVID-19, loneliness, cognitive emotion regulation, and parenting stress. Therefore, the findings could help to identify points of effective intervention to protect mothers raising children in the current epidemic situations. More implications for understanding maternal parenting stress will be discussed in detail.

Author

• Yea-Ji Hong, Inha University
  Presenting Author