Musical Engagement and Parent-Child Attachment in Families With Young Children During the Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted the lives of families in the United States and across the world, impacting parent mental health and stress, and in turn, the parent-child relationship. Music is a common parent-child activity and has been found to positively impact relationships, but little is known about music’s role in parent-child interactions during a pandemic. The current study utilized an online questionnaire to assess the use of music in the home of young children and their parents in the United States and Canada during Covid-19 and its relationship with parents’ affective attachment with their child. Musical activity was high for both parents and children. Parents reported using music for both emotion regulation and to socially connect with their children. Parent-child musical engagement was associated with parent-child attachment, controlling for relevant parent variables including parent distress, efficacy, education, and parent-child engagement in non-musical activities. These results indicate that music may be an effective tool for building and maintaining parent-child relationships during a period of uncertainty and change.

Music for hedonia and eudaimonia during pandemic social isolation

“…While most people experienced equally strong emotions in response to music during lockdown compared to before, increases were slightly more frequent than decreases-but this was also the case for non-music-induced emotions (Ziv & Hollander-Shabtai, 2021). Musical activities in children increased during lockdown, and parents used music significantly more for emotion regulation and for connecting socially with their offspring (Cho & Ilari, 2021;Ribeiro et al, 2021a;Steinberg et al, 2021). Taken together, these results strongly confirm pre-pandemic findings that music listening is capable of effectively enhancing wellbeing (Randall & Rickard, 2017;Saarikallio, 2011).…”

“…When asked directly, most participants reported increased music listening during lockdown (Cabedo-Mas et al, 2021;Carlson et al, 2021;Ferreri et al, 2021;Fink et al, 2021;Mas-Herrero et al, 2020;Ribeiro et al, 2021aRibeiro et al, , 2021bSteinberg et al, 2021;Ziv & Hollander-Shabtai, 2021)-paradoxically, also for Spotify (Hurwitz & Krumhansl, 2021). Individual differences are, however, substantial, and some studies found no to little change (Carlson et al, 2021;Krause et al, 2021;Ziv & Hollander-Shabtai, 2021).…”

The Role of Artistic Creative Activities in Navigating the COVID-19 Pandemic in Australia

“…Furthermore, given that creative activities have played an important role in shaping peoples' response to the pandemic, it is plausible that such emotion regulation strategies might be deployed via engagement in ACAs. And, given that previous studies have also shown that musical activities have facilitated emotion regulation during the pandemic (Martín et al, 2021;Steinberg et al, 2021), it is plausible that Australians have also used music for this purpose rather than for other reasons such as self-expression or social group bonding (Vanstone et al, 2016).…”

“…Creative and artistic activities have served a range of purposes during the COVID-19 pandemic in a variety of cultural contexts, such as health promotion, improving environmental aesthetics and memorializing (de-Graft Aikins, 2020), awareness-raising about the threats posed by the pandemic (Blanc et al, 2020), and emotion regulation (Karwowski et al, 2021). And, while musical activities can serve a range of purposes such as self-expression and social group bonding (Vanstone et al, 2016), musical activities have also facilitated emotion regulation during the pandemic (Martín et al, 2021;Steinberg et al, 2021). This evidence suggests that creative activities, including specifically artistic creative activities (hereafter ACAs)-defined as creative activities involving the arts specifically (Fancourt et al, 2019)-have supported individuals and groups in regulating their emotions during the pandemic and in supporting their own mental health and well-being.…”

Survey of the home music environment of children with various developmental profiles

“…Although the scale was initially developed for use with infants, it is considered appropriate for use by parents of older children due to its emphasis on parents' feelings of affective attachment toward their child (and not children's attachment to their parent). Consistent with prior studies that used this scale with parents of older children, including children with developmental disabilities (e.g., Goodman & Glenwick, 2012;Steinberg et al, 2021), we replaced the word "baby" with the word "child. "…”