Prospective Associations Between Pandemic-Related Adversity, Harsh Parenting, and the Development of Prosociality Across Middle to Late Childhood

• Published in: Developmental psychology 2023-03, Vol.59 (3), p.538-548
• Main Authors: Shakiba, Nila, Perlstein, Samantha, Powell, Tralucia, Rodriguez, Yuheiry, Waller, Rebecca, Wagner, Nicholas J.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adversity; Aggression; Anxiety; Behavior; Behavior Problems; Burnout; Child; Child Behavior; Child Development; Child Rearing; Childhood; Childhood Development; Children & youth; Coronaviruses; Correlation; COVID-19; Depression (Psychology); Families & family life; Female; First year; Human; Humans; Longitudinal Studies; Male; Mental Health; Pandemics; Parental stress; Parenting; Parenting Styles; Parents; Parents & parenting; Prosocial Behavior; Resilience; Resilience (Psychology); Risk; Screening Tests; Stress; Stress Variables; System theory; Systems Approach; Systems theory
• ISSN: 0012-1649; 1939-0599
• DOI: 10.1037/dev0001475

Parenting behaviors and children's prosociality (i.e., voluntary behaviors intended to benefit others) are linked across development. Contextual risk and environmental stressors may undermine parenting behaviors known to promote children's prosocial behavior. The COVID-19 pandemic provides a unique context in which to examine how stress and contextual risk disrupt parenting practices and the development of children's prosociality over time. To explore the associations between pandemic-related adversity, parenting practices, and child prosocial behavior, we used survey data from 303 families (child Mage = 6.43; 51.4% female, 48.6% male; 65.7% White) who participated in a three-wave longitudinal study during the first year of the pandemic. Families were recruited from two northeastern cities in the United States. Growth mixture modeling identified two groups of parents who varied in their experience of pandemic-related adversity. The high-adversity group reported significantly more symptoms of depression and anxiety, parental burnout, and pandemic-related worries than the low-adversity group. At baseline, parents in the high-adversity group reported harsher parenting and perceived less prosocial behavior in their children. Across the full sample, there were no significant changes in harsh parenting and parental perceptions of child's prosociality across the first year of the pandemic. However, within the high-adversity group, increases in harsh parenting were related to reductions in children's prosociality over time. Results are interpreted in the context of family systems theory and contribute to our understanding of the links between parenting and children's prosociality and patterns of risk and resilience in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Public Significance Statement The present research investigated contextual and familial influences on children's prosocial behavior, which could potentially improve our understanding of how prosociality develops over time and inform programs that seek to promote prosocial behavior development across childhood and within the context of environmental adversity. Importantly, findings also support the notion that families naturally reorganize and adapt in the face of contextual adversity, which further highlights the importance of leveraging family systems theory and the interconnected nature of families to provide support and intervention for those most at risk.