Mothers’ Anxiety and Parenting as Mediators of the Associations Between COVID-19 and Children’s Behavior Problems

• In Event: Poster Session 02
  In Poster Session: PS 02 Topic - Solicited Content: COVID-19 Related

Abstract

Study Aim: The outbreak of COVID-19 is affecting the lives of millions of parents and children around the world. Guided by ecological systems thinking (Bronfenbrenner, 1979), we sought to identify COVID-19 related contextual features and the parental risk and protective factors accounting for the adaptation of parents and their children to the ongoing pandemic crisis. The study’s goal was to examine the direct and indirect effects of mothers’ subjective experience of COVID-19 on the mothers’ and children’ wellbeing, and the mediating role of maternal anxiety and parenting behavior on these links. The study was carried out in Israel, following the pandemic’s initial outbreak and during the resulting enforced quarantine which confined parents and children to their homes.

Method: A sample of 141 Israeli mothers with at least one child (50.7% girls) between the ages of 3 and 12 (M child age = 6.92, SD child age = 2.55) participated in the study. Mothers completed online questionnaires addressing perceptions about the health and economic threats of COVID-19 and availability of social support (both designed ad hoc for the current study), their anxiety symptoms (BSI; Derogatis, 1993), hostile and supportive parenting behavior (PBI; Lovejoy, Weis, O’Hare, & Rubin, 1999), and their children’s externalizing and internalizing behavior (CBCL; Achenbach & Rescorla, 2000).

Results: Results showed associations between the mothers’ reports of little support, their anxiety symptoms, hostile parenting, and children’s internalizing and externalizing problems, as well as between mothers’ perceptions about the health and economic threats of COVID-19, their anxiety symptoms and children’s internalizing problems. Importantly, mothers’ anxiety and hostile parenting, each on its own and consecutively, mediated the links between the mothers’ perceptions about the threat of COVID-19 and their lack of social and family support and their children’s externalizing and internalizing behaviors (see Table 1 and Figure 1). Interestingly, mothers’ supportive parenting was not significantly associated with mothers’ perceptions about the COVID-19 related threat and/or lack of social support.

Conclusion: Findings stress the importance of maternal mediating mechanisms that account for the worldwide reports of increased behavior problems in children associated with COVID-19. Moreover, the study’s results highlight the importance of mothers’ subjective experience of COVID-19 and how it relates to their mental health, parenting and their children’s behavior problems. Drawing on our findings we can argue, albeit tentatively, that reducing the parent’s preoccupation with the COVID-19 threat, managing general anxiety and maintaining social connections are helpful for parents and children alike. Policy makers, healthcare providers, educators and all professionals working with children should also think about supporting their parents during this prolonged, ongoing health crisis.

Authors

• Keren Hanetz- Gamliel, Academic Collage of Tel Aviv Yaffo
  Presenting Author

• Daphna G. Dollberg, Academic College of Tel Aviv Yaffo
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sigal Levy, The Academic College of Tel Aviv Yaffo
  Non-Presenting Author