Poster #96 - Feeling the Squeeze: Individual, Family, and Environmental Predictors of Adolescents’ Adjustment During the COVID-19 Pandemic

• In Event: Poster Session 08

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic introduced novel stressors shaping parents’ and adolescents’ adjustment. During the early pandemic shutdowns, parents, for example, were required to navigate changes to employment, financial challenges, and roles as caregivers and teachers. Youth had to navigate unplanned home schooling environments, disruptions to social networks, and missed social milestones. Unsurprisingly, research documents that pandemic-related disruptions were related to mental and relational health challenges for both parents and children (e.g., Browne et al., 2021; Cassinat et al., 2021; Peltz et al., 2021). A bioecological perspective (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006) highlights that youth’s development is shaped by interactions between individual, family, and environmental factors. During the COVID-19 shutdowns, it is possible that the physical environment was especially important, as families were largely restricted to their homes. Research indicates that household crowding is related to youth’s mental health and physical health (e.g., Doan & Evans, 2020; Evans, 2021). In this study, guided by a bioecological perspective, we examined the interactions between youth’s stress, parents’ role overload, and household crowding in predicting changes in youth’s mental health from before to during the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns. We expected that the associations between youth’s stress and mental health and parental role overload and mental health would be exacerbated in conditions of greater household crowding.

Participants included one parent and an adolescent from 682 families participating in an ongoing longitudinal study. Annual survey data for Time 1 of this study were collected between March 2019 and March 2020 and a special assessment of individual and family experiences during the pandemic was conducted between May 1, 2020 and June 15, 2020. At Time 1, youth (51% female) averaged 15.67 (SD = .68) years old and parents (85% mothers) averaged 45.15 (SD = 5.37) years. Youth’s mental health symptoms were assessed at both occasions using by the BSI-18 (Derogatis & Melisaratos, 1983); youth’s stress (Fava et al., 1998) and parental role-overload (Reilly, 1982) were measured during the shutdowns only. Residential square footage was obtained from public repositories (e.g., Zillow) and household crowdedness was operationalized as residential square footage divided by household size.

Study goals were tested using OLS multiple regression. Specifically, we regressed youth’s mental health during the pandemic onto their earlier mental health (accounting for stability) and predictors. Interactions between crowdedness and youth’s stress and parents’ role overload were tested and all variables were centered prior to analyses. Consistent with hypotheses, the positive association between youth’s reports of stress during the pandemic and mental health symptoms was moderated by household crowdedness (see Table 1). Specifically, the association was stronger in more crowded contexts (see Figure 1). Inconsistent with expectations, parents’ role overload was unrelated to youth’s mental health symptoms and linkages were not moderated by crowdedness.
Discussion will focus on the need to consider the interactions between individual and environmental factors in shaping youth’s mental health and adjustment, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Authors

• Shawn D Whiteman, Utah State University
  Presenting Author

• Sybil Cutler, Utah State University

• Sahitya Maiya, University of New Hampshire

• Sarfaraz Serang, University of South Carolina

• Jennifer L Maggs, Pennsylvania State University

• Sarah Mustillo, University of Nortre Dame

• Brian C Kelly, Purdue University, West Lafayette