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Parenting during the Pandemic: Antecedents and Consequences of change in Mothers’ Psychological Distress

Fri, April 9, 10:15 to 11:15am EDT (10:15 to 11:15am EDT), Virtual

Abstract

COVID-19 has been changing family life all over the world. As a result, different psychological concerns over parenting have arisen (Stamu-O'brien, Carniciu, Halvorsen, & Jafferany, 2020). The increasing burden of mothers depending on caring for their younger and older children who do not attend the school because of the school lockdown, remote working, and engaging in housework are more likely to increase parents' psychological distress. Moreover, the pandemic experiences (i.e., fear of being infected, loss of life or a family member) of the mothers, economic difficulties based on loss of a job, and parental daily hassles have negative effects on parental psychological distress (Jackson & Choi, 2018). In turn, mothers' increased stress may result in difficulties in providing support for children and increased hostile parenting practices (Chung, Lanier, & Wong, 2020). Despite the increased risk of negative parenting practices, some protective factors such as perceived marital satisfaction and social support may decrease the adverse effects of pandemic related difficulties for mothers. In the current study, we aimed to examine the role of parental stress on the relationship of pandemic-related difficulties and perceived parenting. Pandemic related difficulties, change in the economic situation, and daily hassles would increase maternal psychological distress, which would result in increased negative parenting practices. Marital satisfaction and social support as protective factors would decrease maternal psychological distress depending on the pandemic experiences, economic difficulty, and daily hassles.

A month before the COVID-19 precautions were implemented in Turkey, we collected data from 471 mothers (Mage = 37.30, SD = 5.83) and child dyads (age range 7-17) through school visits in around 20 cities in Turkey. To test the pandemic related experiences, we aimed to reach the same participants and complete Time 2 data collection until December 2020 via online methods and phone calls. We would measure pandemic-related experiences (i.e., fear of being infected, loss of life or a family member, loss of a job, change in the economic situation) via single items prepared by the research team. In addition to the Multidimensional Scale of Social Support (Zimet, Dahlem, Zimet, & Farley, 1988), Relationship Happiness Scale (Fitness & Blampied, 1990), Marital Conflict (Braiker & Kelly, 1979), Depression, Anxiety, Stress Scale, Parenting Daily Hassles Scale (Crnic & Greenberg, 1990) would be given to mothers in Time 2. Children would be asked to fill out the Parental Acceptance Rejection Scale (Rohner, 2005).

The data would be analyzed using Multilevel Modeling, where a composite score of pandemic-related experience questions, change in the economic situation, and daily hassles variables could be taken as predictors of change in maternal psychological stress. Child age would be added as covariate, marital quality and perceived support would be added as moderators and, lastly, parental rejection would be the outcome for the model. The study's findings would be expected to contribute to the literature by detecting the pandemic related change in mothers’ psychological distress and negative parenting practices. Moreover, results would be promising to see the possible protective factors for parental distress and target variables for parental interventions.

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