(PS12-46) Replicating the Family Stress Model During the coronavirus-19 Pandemic: Identifying Parental Resilience Factors

Therapists can more effectively advocate for families from low socioeconomic backgrounds by understanding how financial stressors may influence parenting behaviors. The Family Stress Model (FSM; Conger et al., 1990; Masarik & Conger, 2017) proposes that economic stressors influence parents’ psychological state which sequentially impacts their parenting practices and child adjustment problems. Resilience factors may interrupt the impact of risk factors to produce positive outcomes in children (Masten, 2001). For example, parents reported adapting and facilitating positive child outcomes (Jones et al., 2022) despite experiencing heightened stress during the COVID-19 pandemic (Scrimin et al., 2022). The current study aimed (1) to replicate the risk pathways proposed by the FSM from before to during the COVID-19 pandemic and (2) to identify pre-pandemic resilience factors, including mothers’ perceived social support and observed warmth to their child, that may reduce mothers’ distress and improve parenting despite economic stress across the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. We expected additional resilience factors during the pandemic, such as positive family changes, to also impact relations among mothers’ distress, negative parenting behaviors, and child coping outcomes.

Participants were 170 mother-child dyads, recruited for socioeconomic diversity, who participated in a prospective longitudinal study. Pre-pandemic, dyads completed yearly assessments from child age 1 year to 4 years, from which we derived measures of income-to-needs, perceived social support, and laboratory-observed warmth. Mothers completed two batteries of surveys during the pandemic (summer, 2020; winter, 2020-2021), within which they reported COVID-related economic stress, distress (depression, anxiety, stress), negative parenting, positive changes during the pandemic, and problematic (disengaged, involuntary) child coping.

A path model using FIML estimation tested both aims. Replicating risk pathways, lower pre-pandemic income-to-needs predicted higher pandemic parental distress, which related to more negative parenting. Resilience was demonstrated by a negative relation between pre-pandemic interpersonal support and negative parenting. Moderation existed, such that the relation between negative parenting and problematic child coping (controlling for earlier child coping) became increasingly positive as number of reported positive changes increased. At high positive changes, pre-pandemic interpersonal support predicted lower child problematic coping through lowered negative parenting (90% CI [-0.006, -0.001]).

As predicted, the current study replicated aspects of the FSM for the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, suggesting that economic stress sequentially predicted parental distress, inoptimal parenting, and children’s problematic coping. The current study also points to existing interpersonal support as a compensatory effect that facilitated a resilience process, as well as positive family changes as contextualizing this process. These findings expand upon resilience theory as it relates to the FSM and suggest actionable targets for intervention that may promote resilience in broader contexts.