Pre-pandemic Infant Prosociality and Maternal Sensitivity Relate to Reduced Lockdown-related Stress During the COVID-19 Pandemic

• In Event: The impact of COVID-19 on mother-infant dyads

Abstract

Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, children and their caregivers have to navigate through changing governmental public health restrictions such as lockdowns. However, there is little empirical evidence on which pre-pandemic psychological factors support families in dealing with lockdown-related stress. From a bidirectional, transactional viewpoint (e.g., Essler et al., 2021; Neece et al., 2012), caregiver pre-pandemic emotional availability might support child psychological well-being during lockdowns (Masten et al., 2021, Thompson et al., 2022). Furthermore, child pre-pandemic socio-emotional competencies might facilitate caregivers’ dealing with stress during lockdowns (Sun et al., 2022). The present study aimed to uncover if and to what extent (1) pre-pandemic caregiver emotional availability (i.e., sensitivity and structuring; EA-scales, Biringen, 2008) predicted lower lockdown-related child stress, (2) pre-pandemic child competencies (i.e., prosocial behavior, Svetlova et al., 2010; and behavioral compliance with caregiver requests, Kochanska, 2002) predicted lower lockdown-related maternal stress, and (3) pre-pandemic caregiver and child competencies predicted lower lockdown-related negativity in the mother-child relationship.
To that end, we tested 122 mothers-child dyads of largely middle to high socioeconomic status (63,92% university degree, 13,40% technical college, 11,34% vocational training) in a large city in Western Europe. Pre-pandemic variables were assessed at child age 18 months (M = 18.50 days; SD = 0.33 days). Maternal sensitivity and structuring were measured using the Emotional Availability Scales (Biringen, 2008) through coding free-play interactions between mother and child. Child emotional helping was measured via a task where children could alleviate another’s emotional distress by bringing her a targeted object (e.g., a scarf when someone was freezing; Svetlova et al., 2010). Child compliance behavior was measured in a task where the mother was instructed to ask the child to put spilled toys back into a toy box (Kochanska et al., 2002). In addition, we assessed child stress (5 items; e.g., “My child is frustrated in the current situation”), maternal stress (6 items, e.g., “I feel burdened by the current situation”), and the negativity in the mother-child relationship (5 items, e.g., “There is more conflict between me and my child compared to before the COVID-19 pandemic”) during the first COVID-19 related lockdown at child age 24 months (M = 23.05 months, SD = 2.17 months) in the spring of 2020 via maternal report. All analyses controlled for child pre-pandemic temperamental negativity.
Results showed that (1) maternal sensitivity and structuring did not significantly predict child stress although maternal sensitivity went into the hypothesized direction of predicting lower child stress, b = -0.210, se = 0.129, z = -1.627, p = 0.104, (2) child prosociality (but not behavioral compliance) predicted lower maternal stress, b = -0.204, se = 0.091, z = -2.247, p = 0.025, and that (3) maternal sensitivity predicted lower negativity in the mother-child relationship, b = -0.348, se = 0.158, z = -2.198, p = 0.028. These findings are the first to demonstrate that caregiver emotional availability and child socio-emotional competencies prior to a sociohistorical disruption constitute resilience factors that work together to foster family psychological well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Authors

• Samuel Essler, Ludwig-Maximilans-Universität München
  Presenting Author

• Markus Paulus, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München