Stress and Parenting
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University of Texas, Tyler *
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Health Science
Date
Feb 20, 2024
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Article Information
Brown, S. M., Doom, J. R., Lechuga-Peña, S., Watamura, S. E., & Koppels, T. (2020). Stress and parenting during the global COVID-19 pandemic. Child Abuse and Neglect
, 110
(2), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2020.104699
Summary
The focus of the article is the impacts that the COVID-19 pandemic has in relation to parental perceived stress and child abuse potential. The article goes on to explain that stress and compromised parenting place children at risk of child abuse and neglect, but with the recent COVID-19 pandemic new stressors threaten families. An example of this would be mental health, which parents would be more likely to develop anxiety and depression during the pandemic which can lead to increased child maltreatment. The method used in the article was the
authors recruited families from child and family serving agencies and educational settings, while also calling and emailing past family participants to participate in the current study. An online survey was provided for the families to complete and once it was completed, they were given a monetary reward of a 10-dollar gift card so proper motivation could be given to participants. The
first major finding was Latinx parents reported having the highest number of COVID-19 related stressors than any other racial and ethnic group. The second major finding was that 21 to 47 percent of parents reported their children experiencing changes to their mood and stress levels with parents also experiencing symptoms of anxiety, depression, and lack of sleep.
Critical Evaluation – Justification
The authors introduce past literature related to stress and COVID-19 in the introduction of their article, providing evidence and analyzing it to support the main idea. The authors start off by discussing stress-related literature on an individual and familial level to explain how increase in stressors lead to higher levels of child maltreatment. The article explains the impact of stressors on family environments, which can lead to adverse effects for parents and for children. It then leads on into the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is explained as a stressor that originated outside of the family system. The authors go on to discuss how the uncertainty of the pandemic caused significant stress for parents and children, which increased the risk of harsh parenting. The pandemic caused many issues such as increased social isolation and economic harm, leading to increased stressors on households which increase risk factors for aggression and violence. The authors end off the section by explaining that while there an ample amount of literature discussing risk and protective factors in parent-perceived stress and child maltreatment, they state there is a lack of research concerning stressors from global pandemics and the overall impact it has on stress and parenting. The literature review used the MEAL strategy effectively by discussing both stress and COVID-19 on an individual and collective level. At the start of the section the authors expressed the importance of stress and the role it has in child maltreatment, which established the importance of the article itself. The article then moves on to providing evidence for the impact and effect of stress and the pandemic, further analyzing them in depth in their respective paragraphs. The section then leaves off by introducing research questions, which the authors state the current study will answer with the findings that are discovered.
Critical Evaluation – Sampling Procedures
The sampling method that the authors used for the current study was purposive sampling and voluntary response sampling. It was purposive sampling due to the authors recruiting families from agencies and educational settings, which the study was currently needing to gain further knowledge into the topic. However, voluntary response sampling was also used due to the
authors also contacting families, who participated in past studies, by phone and email if they wished to participate in the current study. External validity would be compromised based off the restricted region the study takes place in, which is the Rocky Mountain region but doesn’t consider the east coast or other regions where the pandemic may have had less impact. Additionally, the sample size was small due to the families only being associated with service agencies and educational settings. Generalizability wasn’t impacted negatively, at least when it came to the COVID-19 pandemic due to the widespread awareness and warnings that still caused
families to stress and social distance. The same can’t be said for pandemics in general due to the uncertainty of how future pandemics will operate or spread unless it works in a similar way to COVID-19. The study was able to represent a good amount when it came to families and related stressors, especially when the pandemic was at its peak and families were fearful of the impact. Later in the article, the authors explained how there were limitations to the study such as the small sample size being limited to the Rocky Mountain region and only families involved with service agencies and educational settings. Additionally, the sample also was largely made up of mothers that identified as non-Latinx white which left the sample not being as racially and ethnically diverse as it could have been to increased external validity and generalizability.
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Critical Evaluation – Measurement Decisions
In the method section the authors explained the procedure of who would be taking the survey and how long it would take to complete the survey, leaving the final sample number to 183 parents. The authors then listed off the basic demographic characteristics that would be included to the study which were parent age, gender, race/ethnicity, education, relationship status, receipt of financial assistance, and number of adults and children in household. These variables would give a better handle on how participants identified themselves and to learn if there’s a correlation to certain demographics that increase the chance of stressors. Next the authors would use a checklist to determine if parents or their children experienced any stressors in certain domains because of the COVID-19 pandemic. These domains would be related to parent physical and mental health, parent relationships with partner and children, and children’s physical health and academic learning. The participant would be asked if they experienced any stressors through a simple yes or no question, which would be used to gather a total COVID-19 risk score. The authors would also have variables that were related to mental health risk factors which were parental anxiety, parental depression, and poor parental sleep. These variables would
be structured as a scale question, asking participants to answer which level they have felt recently from not at all to nearly every day. Like the last set of variables, protective factors had three variables to discuss parental protective factors against the pandemic which were parental support, perceived control over the COVID-19 pandemic, and parental acceptance. The variables
consisted of items to measure participant’s thoughts which were put into a scale question that ranged from never to always. Lastly there were the primary outcomes, perceived stress and child abuse potential, which were measured in same way as mental health risk factors and protective factors.