Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology ( IF 4.096 ) Pub Date : 2021-02-16 , DOI: 10.1007/s10802-020-00732-6 Emily M Cohodes 1 , Sarah McCauley 1 , Dylan G Gee 1
Nearly all families in the United States were exposed to varying degrees of stress related to the COVID-19 pandemic during the spring of 2020. Building on previous research documenting the pernicious effects of stress on youth mental health, we aimed to test the effects of exposure to COVID-19-related stress on youth symptomatology. Further, in light of evidence suggesting that parents play an important role in buffering children from environmental stress, we assessed how specific parental behaviors (i.e., parental emotion socialization, maintenance of home routines, and availability to discuss the pandemic with child) contributed to effective parental buffering of the impact of pandemic-related stress on children’s symptomatology. Conversely, we tested whether parental anxiety-related symptomatology and parenting stress exacerbated the effect of children’s exposure to pandemic-related stress on children’s symptomatology. Results suggest that parents who engaged in relatively higher levels of emotion coaching of children’s negative emotions and who maintained more stable home routines during the pandemic were more effectively able to buffer the effects of pandemic-related stress on children’s symptomatology. Parents who reported higher levels of parenting stress and anxiety-related symptomatology were less likely to effectively buffer stress. Though interpretation of the findings is limited due to sole reliance on parental report and the cross-sectional study design due to the constraints of collecting data during a global pandemic, findings underscore the importance of assessing family-level factors when considering the impact of stressors on children’s symptomatology and highlight the need to support parents during global events that place families under significant stress.
中文翻译:
COVID-19 时期父母对压力的缓冲:家庭层面的因素可能会缓和大流行相关压力与青年症状学之间的关联
在 2020 年春季,美国几乎所有家庭都面临着与 COVID-19 大流行相关的不同程度的压力。在先前记录压力对青少年心理健康有害影响的研究的基础上,我们旨在测试暴露的影响与 COVID-19 相关的青少年症状压力。此外,鉴于有证据表明父母在缓冲儿童免受环境压力方面发挥重要作用,我们评估了特定的父母行为(即父母情感社交、维持家庭作息以及与孩子讨论流行病的可能性)如何有助于有效父母缓冲流行病相关压力对儿童症状的影响。反过来,我们测试了父母焦虑相关的症状和养育压力是否会加剧儿童暴露于流行病相关压力对儿童症状的影响。结果表明,在大流行期间对儿童的负面情绪进行相对较高水平的情绪指导并保持更稳定的家庭作息的父母能够更有效地缓冲大流行相关压力对儿童症状的影响。报告更高水平的育儿压力和焦虑相关症状的父母不太可能有效地缓冲压力。尽管由于在全球大流行期间收集数据的限制,仅依赖父母报告和横断面研究设计,因此对研究结果的解释有限,