The COVID-19 pandemic will have widespread health, economic, and psychological consequences. Reports indicate the Latino community is particularly vulnerable to the economic and health risks of this pandemic as a consequence of systemic oppression. Latina mothers, in particular, are navigating the pandemic from their racialized, gendered, and classed positions while caring for children and families. These factors are likely to have a significant psychological toll. The sample consisted of 70 Latina mothers. The majority of the families (72%) contained at least one employed adult, of which 91.7% were essential workers. Factors associated with stress, depressive symptoms, and anxiety symptoms during the initial March 20 to June 1, 2020, California “shelter in place” mandate were assessed via phone survey using validated measures and Likert-scale items created for the study. Receipt of the federal stimulus check on stress, depressive symptoms, and anxiety symptoms was also assessed. Due to the pandemic, 52.7% of the mothers reported being forced to engage in economic cutbacks. Mothers’ experiences of stress during the outbreak stem from worries about themselves contracting the virus and making economic cutbacks. Economic cutbacks were also associated with greater reports of depressive and anxiety symptoms. Receiving the stimulus payment did not reduce economic cutbacks, contract worries, stress, or depressive and anxiety symptoms. Findings highlight the pandemic’s immediate economic toll on Latino families. Further, these economic implications seem to be having downstream effects on mothers’ psychological well-being, which were not alleviated by the stimulus payment.

Young children's physiological and emotional regulation depend on supportive caregiving, especially in the context of stress and adversity. Experiences of child maltreatment become biologically embedded by shaping stress physiology. Maternal emotion socialization may have an important influence on children's limbic-hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (LHPA) functioning. Grounded in theories of caregiver emotion socialization, a person-centered latent profile analysis was utilized to identify profiles of maternal emotion socialization among a high risk, low income, and racially diverse group of 248 mothers and their young children (M age = 4.39 years, SD = 1.10). The majority of the mothers (n = 165) had a history of involvement with the Department of Child Services for substantiated cases of child maltreatment. A latent profile analysis was conducted revealing three emotion socialization profiles: disengaged, engaged, and engaged + supportive. Emotion socialization profile differences in children's diurnal cortisol levels and slope (using area under the curve with respect to ground and increase, respectively) were examined. Children's diurnal cortisol levels were higher, and slopes were flatter, when mothers used more disengaged emotion socialization strategies. Mothers who neglected their children were more likely to fit the disengaged profile than the engaged profile. Implications for the socialization of regulation in children exposed to adversity are discussed.

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Objective This study aimed to understand how periodic shifts in financial cutbacks and fears of contracting COVID‐19 contributed to children's externalizing behaviors due to increases in maternal stress among low‐income Latina mothers during the first 10 months of the COVID‐19 pandemic. Background The COVID‐19 pandemic caused widespread health, economic, and psychological consequences for families and children. The Latino community is particularly vulnerable to the economic and health risks of this pandemic as a consequence of systemic oppression. The family stress model suggests that these family stressors will have psychological repercussions to parents, and downstream behavioral consequences to children. Method We examined both the within‐ and between‐person impacts of worry surrounding contracting the virus and the economic consequences of the pandemic on maternal stress and child externalizing behaviors. Participants were 73 Latina mothers who completed assessments an average eight times across the first  10 months of the COVID‐19 pandemic. At each assessment time, the mother was asked about worries surrounding contracting the virus, economic cutbacks the family was making, her perceived stress, and her child's externalizing behaviors during a brief phone call. Results Between‐families, higher economic cutbacks indirectly increased child externalizing behaviors through maternal stress. The within‐family model revealed that at assessments when mothers expressed greater worry about contracting the COVID‐19 virus, they also reported greater stress. Further, at the within‐person level, a mother's greater experience of stress was associated with greater reports of child externalizing behaviors, though the indirect association between COVID‐19 contract worry and child externalizing behaviors through maternal stress was not significant. Conclusions Across the first 10 months of the COVID‐19 pandemic, the children in Latino families participating in this research exhibited more externalizing behaviors among families that engaged in more financial cutbacks as a function maternal stress. However, periodic spikes in Latina mothers' fears of contracting COVID‐19 contributed to periodic spikes in stress, which predicted periodic spikes in child externalizing behaviors. Implications Greater effort toward social policy that provides economic support for vulnerable families before periods of increased societal stress and greater protections for workers with limited sick leave and schedule flexibility will help promote resilience to future crises among low‐income Latino families.

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