We're in This Together: Parental Monitoring, Emotional Suppression, and Social Support During the COVID-19 Pandemic

• In Event: Poster Session 09
  In Poster Session: PS 09 Topic - Family Context & Processes

Abstract

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, children’s loneliness levels have increased worldwide due to school closures and stay-at-home orders (Orgilés et al., 2020). Social support has emerged as an important resource to buffer this effect (Dubow & Tisak, 1989; Leung, 2007; Perkins et al., 1994). Therefore, it is critical to understand the processes by which children and adolescents acquire social support amidst the ongoing pandemic restrictions. Adolescents who have parents who evidence low levels of monitoring (i.e., are overly permissive) tend to have less social support (Suldo & Huebner, 2004). Monitoring also has implications for emotion regulation, which may influence children’s ability to access and maintain supportive relationships (Tsai et al., 2017). Thus, the current study evaluated emotional suppression as a mechanism by which parental monitoring was expected to promote adolescents’ social support during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Participants were 207 parent-child dyads (48.79% female; 46.86% Latinx). At age 12 (Mage = 12.245 years, SD = 0.352), children rated how often their parents were aware of their social and online activities (e.g., schoolwork and internet searches) from 1 (Never) to 3 (Always) across 13 items (e.g., How often does your parent know what you spend your money on?) using the Parental Monitoring measure (Stattin & Kerr, 2000). At age 14 (Mage = 14.198 years, SD = 0.473), children reported on their emotion regulation strategies using the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire for Children and Adolescents (ERQ-CA; Gullone & Taffe, 2012), with 5 items capturing expressive suppression strategies (e.g., I keep my feelings to myself) on a 3-point scale from 0 (Not at all true for me) to 2 (Really true for me). One year later, during the first weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US (i.e., April and May 2020; Mage = 15.228 years, SD = 0.571), children rated their social support from parents, teachers, classmates, and friends using Harter’s (2012) 24-item Social Support Scale for Children (e.g., Some kids often spend their recess being alone BUT other kids spend recess playing with their classmates).

A MANOVA revealed a significant main effect of gender (Wilks’ λ = .926, p = .009), such that girls reported higher parental monitoring at age 12 (F = 9.824, p = .002) than boys. There was no significant main effect of race nor significant race*gender interaction. At the bivariate level, parental monitoring was negatively related to emotional suppression
(r = -.232, p < .001), but not significantly related to social support during the COVID-19 assessment (r = .081, p = .243). Emotional suppression was negatively related to social support during the COVID-19 assessment (r = -.335, p < .001). Mediation analyses conducted using Hayes’ (2013) PROCESS revealed a significant indirect effect from parental monitoring to higher levels of children’s sense of social support during the onset of stay-at-home orders via children’s lower engagement of emotional suppression strategies prior to the pandemic (See Table 1).

These findings suggest that positive parent-child relationships encourage healthier emotion regulation abilities which promote higher levels of social support during the pandemic.

Authors

• Christina Hang Vu, University of California - Riverside
  Presenting Author

• Brianne Coulombe, University of South Carolina Aiken
  Non-Presenting Author

• Tuppett M. Yates, University of California - Riverside
  Non-Presenting Author