Parenting and Children?s Behavior During the COVID 19 Pandemic: Mother?s Perspective.

VARGAS RUBILAR, JAEL; RICHAUD DE MINZI, MARÍA CRISTINA; LEMOS, VIVIANA; BALABANIAN, CINTHIA

Frontiers in Psychology

Frontiers

Año: 2022 vol. 13

1664-1078

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, many parents have felt anxious,overwhelmed, and stressed out due to the changes in education and family and workingroutines. This work aimed to (a) describe three dimensions of perceived parenting(positive parenting, parenting stress, and parental school support) in the COVID19 pandemic context, (b) describe possible changes perceived by mothers in theirchildren?s behavior during the social isolation phase, (c) analyze if behavioral changesvary according to the dimension of perceived parenting, and (d) analyze whether thecharacteristics of perceived parenting dimensions vary with mother?s age, number ofchildren and number of work hours. The purposive sample consisted of 646 mothersof school-aged children in Argentina. Questionnaires on sociodemographic and workrelated data, and on children?s behavior were administered, as well as an instrument(Vargas Rubilar et al., 2021) that assessed the three parenting dimensions (positiveparenting, parenting stress, and parent-school support). The sociodemographic andwork-related variables of the study were described using descriptive statistics: measuresof central tendency, frequencies, and percentages. The changes perceived in children?sbehavior according to the reports given by the mothers regarding positive parenting,parenting stress, and school support were compared using the Mann Whitney?s Utest, respecting the qualitative nature of the evaluated indicators. A factorial MANOVAwas conducted to analyze the effect of mother?s age, ä number of children, andthe number of work hours on parenting perceived by mothers. Parenting dimensionsinfluenced the perceived children?s behavior. Mothers with higher positive parentingperceived more changes in their children?s behavior. In addition, those mothers whowere more stressed out perceived more problems in almost all the measured behaviorsthan less stressed mothers. The mothers who reported to have provided more schoolsupport to their children perceived that they adapted better to online classes. Finally,mothers? age and the number of children I parenting, particularly on parenting stress andschool support, whereas work hours did not. A number of children affected stress andschool support, and age only affected parenting stress. The only significant interactionregarding parenting was observed between the number of children and the number ofwork hours, which specifically affected parenting stress. Although social isolation dueto COVID-19 affected children?s behavior, according to mothers, this might be partiallylinked to the number of children, mothers? age, and the mothers? parenting style. Theseinitial findings may allow the identification of some protective factors and some riskfactors of parenting in the Argentine context of a pandemic, and the design of preventivepsychoeducational interventions to optimize the psychological wellbeing of families.