Parenting Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Longitudinal Findings for Child Mental Health Outcomes

Abstract Adult mental health issues increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially for parents. Few studies have investigated associations between parents’ pre-pandemic mental health issues and parents’ emotion-related parenting practices during the pandemic, as well as subsequent child mental health outcomes. The present study aimed to: 1) investigate associations between pre-existing parent mental health issues (2019) with long-term child mental health issues (2021), via changes in emotion-related parenting practices during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020); and 2) test whether COVID-19 pandemic-related environmental stressors during 2020 and 2021 (e.g., loss of employment) exacerbated associations between emotion-related parenting practices and child mental health problems. Data were drawn from (name of study). Parents of children aged 4–9 years (N = 1,046) completed online self-report surveys. A path analysis model with a moderated mediation was tested in Mplus. Parent mental health issues at Time 1 was associated with lower levels of emotion coaching practices at Time 2, and emotion dismissing practices at Time 2 was associated with higher levels of children’s parent-reported behavioral problems at Time 3. There was no evidence to support mediation effects, or a moderating influence of COVID-19 environmental stressors. Findings highlight the importance of providing parents mental health support, in order to facilitate emotion coaching parenting practices. Further, the provision of evidence-based and flexibly-delivered parenting support in future pandemics/crisis events may better support parents’ mental health and parenting, and reduce the impact on child mental health problems.