Poster #89 - The Role of Concern in Successful Parental Intervention in Children’s Peer Adjustment During a Pandemic

• In Event: Poster Session 07

Abstract

COVID-19 represented an unprecedented challenge to adolescents’ peer experiences, time in schools fluctuated and peer contacts, groups, activities, and friendships were disrupted. Adolescents in rural contexts faced particular hardship, as school often represents the only or primary context for social involvement outside the family. Although considerable past research has documented the potential positive role that parents can play in supporting their offspring’s peer adjustment, the pandemic undercut many parents’ mental health and parenting capacity. As such, the ability to recognize and assist children with peer difficulties may have suffered even among parents capable of supporting their children during less turbulent times. The present research explored how parents’ recognition of their offspring’s peer problems and their provision of support and advice related to their offspring’s reports of peer loneliness and friendship conflict and closeness at the height of the pandemic. We explored how well parents recognized that their child had peer difficulties during this time, how closely this recognition was linked to their efforts to be supportive, and how recognition and support could potentially mitigate peer problems in offspring.

Participants were 234 (119 male) adolescents and parents from 60 rural counties in the South tested during the first full year of the pandemic. Parents reported the extent of their concern over their child’s peer difficulties. Children reported how helpful and supportive their parent was with peers, their loneliness, and the extent of their conflict and closeness with their friends (all αs ≥ .79). Family income, child race, school modality (face-to-face/online), and point in the pandemic were controlled in all analyses. Regression and ANOVA analyses considered potential moderation by child sex.

Parents who perceived peer difficulties in their child had children who reported significantly greater loneliness and conflict and less closeness with friends, as expected. Parents who perceived peer problems did not necessarily provide assistance according to their child (r = -.03, ns). As in the past, parents that provided assistance had children with fewer peer difficulties generally. However, the effects of assistance varied somewhat by outcome, sex, and the context of concern. Families were cross classified into groups of notably high/low perceived problems and high/low assistance for further analysis. As shown in Figure 1, when parents perceived cause for concern and provided assistance, offspring’s friendship conflict was comparable to that of other children without apparent peer difficulties. On the other hand, when parents perceived cause for concern but did not offer assistance, their offspring had more conflict with friends than all other groups. Figure 2 shows this same pattern for girls with regard to loneliness, but not for boys. Assistance did not relate to friendship closeness regardless of the presence or absence of parental concern.

Results support past research on the importance of parents’ intervention on behalf of their children regarding peers. Indeed, intervention in this context appears to wholly mitigate against trouble. However, they extend past research by suggesting that failure to spring to action when you recognize problems can exacerbate problems during challenging historical times such as a pandemic.

Authors

• Daniel Richard Mack, University of Alabama
  Presenting Author

• Jeffrey G Parker, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa