Poster #92 - Mother-Child Emotional Availability Through the COVID-19 Pandemic: Examining Continuity, Stability, and Bidirectional Associations

• In Event: Poster Session 20

Abstract

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the well-being of families across the world (Prime et al., 2020). Emerging evidence shows that during the COVID-19 outbreak mothers of young children reported higher levels of parenting stress, harsh parenting behaviors, and difficulties in mother-child relationships compared to the pre-pandemic period (e.g., McRae et al., 2021). However, a fundamental limitation of these findings is the exclusive use of self-report measures of parent-child relationship quality. The goal of the current study was to address this gap by examining changes in observed mother-child interactions from before to during the pandemic when infants were 3 and 12 months old, respectively. We specifically focused on mother-child Emotional Availability (EA), referring to the capacity of partners in a dyad to be accessible and able to respond appropriately to one another’s emotional signals (Biringen et al., 2014). We hypothesized that maternal and child EA dimensions will show mean-level decreases and demonstrate moderate stability between the two time points. We also examined whether changes in mother-child interactions are moderated by social support, one of the important resources that can protect families from the negative effects of stress on parenting (Belsky, 1984).
Participants were 110 Israeli mother-child dyads (51% girls) that were assessed prior to (T1; age 3 months) and during (T2; age 12 months) the pandemic. At both time points, mother-child interactions were observed during play (non-stressful context) and tasks designed to elicit infant frustration (stressful context). Maternal and child EA were coded offline. Perceived maternal social support was assessed at T2 (MSPSS; Zimet et al., 1990).
To assess the continuity (i.e., mean-level differences) in maternal and child EA between T1 and T2, we conducted Wald’s test with k-1 degrees of freedom. Maternal EA demonstrated no significant mean-level changes from before to during the COVID-19 pandemic. Child involvement significantly increased for both play (p < 0.001) and frustration tasks (p < 0.001). Likewise, child responsiveness increased between the two time points when assessed through the frustration (p < 0.01) and the play tasks (p = 0.01). To assess stability (i.e., rank-order associations) and bidirectional associations between mother and child we ran s series of autoregressive cross-lagged models. Bidirectional associations were evident only in the stressful context: maternal EA at T1 positively predicted maternal EA and child involvement at T2, whereas child responsiveness negatively predicted maternal EA. Finally, mothers’ perceived levels of social support further moderated these associations (Figures 1,2). Infants’ responsiveness and involvement at T1 predicted maternal EA at T2 only when mothers reported low levels of social support.
Our findings suggest that in the current study maternal and child EA did not decline during the COVID-19 pandemic. Stability and mother-child bidirectional associations in EA were evident only in the frustrating context and not in play interactions, and these associations seemed to be stronger among mothers reporting low levels of social support. These findings lend additional support to the growing literature that suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic has not impacted all families in the same way (Gunnar, 2021).

Authors

• Gal Doron, Ben Gurion University of the Negev
  Presenting Author

• Nila Shakiba, Boston University

• Avigail Gordon Hacker, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

• Alisa Egotubov, Ben Gurion University of the Negev

• Nicholas James Wagner, Boston University

• Noa Gueron-Sela, Ben Gurion University of the Negev