Latina mothers navigating COVID‐19: Within‐ and between‐family stress processes over time

Abstract

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.

Structural risks and family adjustment in midwestern Latine immigrant families: Extending the family stress model.

“…Latine immigrant families were particularly vulnerable to job losses, pay cuts, and food insecurity and were also at high risk for contracting COVID-19 due to being disproportionately employed in low-wage, essential worker jobs (Cabrera et al, 2022; Carlos Chavez et al, 2023). One study found that Latine families reported more pandemic-related stressors (e.g., parent stress, conflict) than other race/ethnic groups (Brown et al, 2020), and that the pandemic generated both economic strains and increasing worries about health of family members (Boyer et al, 2023).…”

“…Both qualitative and quantitative work has demonstrated that factors such as long-standing social and immigration-related inequities and experiences of discrimination shape the experiences of immigrant families including socioeconomic opportunities (e.g., Lorenzo-Blanco et al, 2017; Miller & Csizmadia, 2022). Moreover, immigrant families of color were among the most vulnerable to the health and socioeconomic repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic (Boyer et al, 2023; Prime et al, 2020; Quandt et al, 2021).…”

Navigating health and well‐being during the COVID‐19 pandemic: Experiences of Latina immigrant mothers in rural Midwestern communities

“…Lack of access to support systems may exacerbate stress they experience in relation to legal violence, bias, and other contextual factors within their lived experiences. Boyer et al (2023) found that the COVID-19 pandemic distinctly affected Latina mothers in the United States as they managed racial, gender, and class-related bias.…”

“…Bruhn (2022) noted that stress Latina mothers experienced during the pandemic was heighted by their lower socioeconomic status and adversely impacted their maternal role as they aimed to “remain vigilant to protect their children from the contagious disease” (Bruhn, 2022, p. 16). However, Boyer et al (2023) and Bickham Mendez (2020) denoted Latina mothers' resiliency as they drew upon their intersectional experiences to make the most of challenges presented during the pandemic. They described how mothers found pleasure in and resourcefully used the additional time they had with their children as a result of stay‐at‐home orders during the pandemic to strengthen connections within their families.…”

Deviations in stress and support: Associations with parenting emotions across the COVID-19 pandemic.

“…Mothers who engaged in more cutbacks reported higher levels of stress, depression, and anxiety (Hibel et al, 2021). Subsequent longitudinal analyses revealed a cascade by which greater financial cutbacks lead to higher children’s externalizing behaviors, through maternal stress (Boyer et al, 2023). Neither of these previous studies examined mothers’ experience of parenting or their reports of partner support.…”