Original title: Parents' Stress and Children's Psychological Problems in Families Facing the COVID-19 Outbreak in Italy
Parents of children aged 2 to 14 answered an online survey about quarantine, stress, and their children’s behavior and emotions. Parents who found quarantine harder to manage reported more stress. That stress was linked to more problems in children, with stress in the parent-child relationship showing a stronger link than parents’ personal stress. The survey did not find effects from living in a more at-risk area, home conditions, or contact with pandemic consequences.
Imagine a family trying to get through a week of chores while everyone is stuck at home. When the workload feels too hard, tension can build between a parent and child, making it harder for the child to cope. In this paper, the difficult chores stand for quarantine strain, and that growing tension stands for parent-child stress linked to children’s problems.
Families under lockdown can face more than practical disruption: parents’ stress may be connected to children’s emotional and behavioral difficulties. The study points to family support as an important consideration when planning responses to quarantine.
The abstract describes parent-reported survey findings, so it does not establish that quarantine stress caused children’s problems. It does not provide details about the number of families, how they were recruited, or how long the effects lasted. Its conclusions concern families facing the COVID-19 outbreak in Italy and children aged 2 to 14.
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Parents' Stress and Children's Psychological Problems in Families Facing the COVID-19 Outbreak in Italy — Maria Spinelli, Francesca Lionetti, Massimiliano Pastore et al. — Frontiers in Psychology — doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01713
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper.