Perceived stress as mediator for longitudinal effects of the COVID-19 lockdown on wellbeing of parents and children

Abstract

Dealing with a COVID-19 lockdown may have negative effects on children, but at the same time might facilitate parent-child bonding. Perceived stress may influence the direction of these effects. Using a longitudinal twin design, we investigated how perceived stress influenced lockdown induced changes in wellbeing of parents and children. A total of 106 parents and 151 children (10-13-year-olds) filled in questionnaires during lockdown and data were combined with data of previous years. We report a significant increase in parental negative feelings (anxiety, depression, hostility and interpersonal sensitivity). Longitudinal child measures showed a gradual decrease in internalizing and externalizing behavior, which seemed decelerated by the COVID-19 lockdown. Changes in parental negative feelings and children's externalizing behavior were mediated by perceived stress: higher scores prior to the lockdown were related to more stress during the lockdown, which in turn was associated with an increase in parental negative feelings and children's' externalizing behavior. Perceived stress in parents and children was associated with negative coping strategies. Additionally, children's stress levels were influenced by prior and current parental overreactivity. These results suggest that children in families with negative coping strategies and (a history of) parental overreactivity might be at risk for negative consequences of the lockdown.

Figure 1

Longitudinal changes in parental negative feelings (a) and parental overreactivity (b). Asterisk indicate significant differences (p < .05).

Figure 2

Longitudinal changes in internalizing (a) and externalizing (b) behavior in children. Asterisk indicate significant differences (p < .05), crosses indicate marginally significant differences (p = .056).

Figure 3

Percentage of selected items that parents (a) and children (b) selected to apply to them during the past two weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Figure 4

Perceived stress as mediator for longitudinal changes in parental negative feelings (a) and externalizing behavior in children (b).

Figure 5

Timeline of data collection and COVID-19 related events in the Netherlands. The data collection of T5 had to be paused due to COVID-19 lockdown. As only 28% of the sample had data on T5 (collected before the COVID-19 lockdown), we did not include these data in the current study. This timeline was created by O.B. using Adobe Illustrator CC 2018, https://www.adobe.com/nl/products/illustrator.html.

Figure 6

Flowchart of participating parents and children. The contacted families were part of the longitudinal L-CID study of the middle childhood cohort (MCC) and consisted of all families that were enrolled in the L-CID study.