Resilience in mothers during the COVID-19 pandemic

• Published in: Journal of family psychology Vol. 36; no. 6; p. 815
• Main Authors: Jones, Lauren B, Kiel, Elizabeth J, Luebbe, Aaron M, Hay, M Cameron
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States 01.09.2022
• Subjects: Adult; Child; COVID-19; Female; Humans; Middle Aged; Mother-Child Relations - psychology; Mothers - psychology; Pandemics; Parenting - psychology
• ISSN: 1939-1293
• DOI: 10.1037/fam0000985

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has brought immense psychological pressure and disruptions to daily life for all individuals, and particularly children, parents, and families. Despite these difficulties, parents are able to show resilience through adaptive coping and positive parenting behaviors. Although there is robust research on resilience in children, very little research has tested predictors of parental resilience. The present study presents descriptive information about mothers' pandemic-related stressors and positive changes and then tests whether prepandemic maternal well-being and child effortful control predicted mothers' resilient parental outcomes (positive behavior and coping) through the mediators of maternal self-compassion, adherence to family routines, and child coping. The sample comprised 95 mothers (95.38% European American, 3.2% African American, and 1.1% Asian American) with a mean age of 38.21 years ( = 5.71 years, Range = 25.72-51.60 years) and education ranging from a high school to an advanced degree ( = 16.26 years, = 2.28 years, Range = 12-21 years). Results revealed that prepandemic maternal well-being predicted adaptive coping both directly and indirectly through self-compassion. Children's effortful control predicted maternal adaptive coping indirectly through children's own adaptive coping, and predicted mothers' positive parenting behaviors directly. Posthoc models revealed adherence to routines to be a correlate and outcome, rather than predictor, of positive parenting and bidirectional relations between parent and child coping. This study provides evidence for parent, child, and family-level factors related to parental resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).