Child Psychological Functioning During the COVID-19 Lockdown: An Ecological, Family-Centered Approach

Abstract

: Objective: To evaluate how sociodemographic characteristics and various aspects of parent well-being, family functioning, parent-child relationship, and child characteristics are related to psychological functioning in children aged 9 to 12 years during the COVID-19 lockdown. Method: Participants included 144 children aged 9 to 12 years and their parents who lived in the province of Quebec, Canada, during the COVID-19 mandatory lockdown. Parents and children were administered a phone-based survey in which various child, parent, parent-child, and family characteristics were assessed. Results: Results showed that higher internalizing problems in children were related to greater depressive symptoms in parents, lower attachment security to parents, and greater aversion to aloneness in children. Results on externalizing behavior problems showed that more problems were associated with more family dysfunction and chaos and lower attachment security to parents. Finally, results on children's anxiety toward COVID-19 showed that more anxiety was associated with greater parental anxiety toward COVID-19 and more child aversion to aloneness. Conclusion: Our findings showed that even during an unusual and stressful context such as a pandemic, proximal variables such as the attachment relationship that have been known to be closely associated with adaptation are significantly related to child psychological functioning. Such observations are important because they highlight factors that may accentuate child vulnerability in times of a pandemic and shed light on potential intervention targets.

Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on children's mental health: A systematic review

“…Mothers were even the sole participants in seven included studies ( 43 , 44 , 47 , 52 , 53 , 57 , 65 ). Compared with mothers, the fathers' participation in research studies was low, so fathers were one of the respondents in ten included studies only [e.g., ( 32 , 39 , 45 , 46 , 48 , 49 , 51 , 60 – 62 , 64 )]. Studies using both parent-child dyads as informants were also dearth ( 40 , 45 , 56 , 58 , 60 ).…”

“…This fact is supported by many existing studies, which provide strong empirical evidence that maternal wellbeing predicts child wellbeing ( 75 , 76 ). About one-fifth of the included studies examined how parents' mental health impacted children's internalizing and externalizing behaviors ( 32 , 39 , 44 , 45 , 55 , 56 , 66 , 67 ). Wang et al ( 67 ) stressed that better parental wellbeing was associated with a decrease in child mental health problems.…”

The impact of COVID-19 pandemic on psychopathological symptoms in mothers and their school-age children before, during and after the COVID-19 pandemic peak

“…Our results showed that in the NRG group, children’s aggressive symptoms decreased at T3 (reaching even lower scores than pre-pandemic) after increasing at T2. We hypothesize that children presented higher symptoms of aggression during the lockdown period due to the great disruption of daily routines (Dubois-Comtois et al, 2021 ) that exceeded their capacity to adapt. School attendance and social interactions were impeded, for instance, and the environment was no longer perceived as safe, stable, and predictable (Glynn et al, 2021 ).…”

Changes in Prosocial Behaviors Among Children With Behavioral Problems Following Incredible Years Parenting Program

“…It has been reported that home-based schooling brought a great deal of stress to parents, and the pre-existing behavioral problems in children exacerbated parenting stress ( Meltzer et al, 2011 ). Moreover, there was also a spill-over effect from parents’ lockdown-induced stress or anxiety to children’s emotional and behavioral problems during the lockdown ( Spinelli et al, 2020 ; Dubois-Comtois et al, 2021 ). This proves that children are equally vulnerable and easily influenced by the mental state of their parents ( Imran et al, 2020 ).…”