Examining Children’s Mental Health and Parenting Quality before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Background: The goal of the current study was to characterize the impact of COVID-19 mitigation efforts (i.e., stay-at-home orders) on children’s mental health and parenting quality, as well as to assess predictors of children’s mental health during the pandemic. Methods: Seventy-nine children (18 with autism, 61 without) and their parents who participated in a previous study and were at least 10 years old (M = 13.8, SD = 1.7) were invited to participate in three online follow-up surveys post initiation of the stay-at-home-order (during May through November 2020). Children were predominantly White (49.4%) and not Hispanic or Latino (78.5%). Parents reported on children’s anxiety and depressive symptoms, as well as their own parenting practices. Family togetherness, conflict, financial problems, and parental mental health during the pandemic were also collected. Results: Children without autism experienced a significant decrease in anxiety symptoms across the beginning of the pandemic and a significant increase in depressive symptoms from pre- to post-stay-at-home-order. Children with autism experienced a significant decrease in depressive symptoms from pre- to post- stay-at-home-order. Parents of children without autism reported a significant decrease in positive parenting from pre- to post stay-at-home-order. Higher levels of permissive parenting and financial problems were associated with children’s depressive symptoms. Higher levels of parent mental health difficulties and permissive parenting were associated with higher levels of children’s anxiety symptoms. Conclusions: Children are experiencing both improvements and declines in mental health relative to pre-pandemic. Parenting quality and parental mental health have direct impacts on children’s functioning during the pandemic.

Infant negative affect moderates longitudinal associations between maternal gatekeeping and toddlers’ social–emotional difficulties

Maternal gatekeeping is characterized by the extent to which mothers engage in behaviors that ultimately serve to inhibit (i.e., gate close) or encourage (i.e., gate open) father involvement in childrearing. This study considered direct and indirect associations between observed and reported maternal gatekeeping and children’s social–emotional difficulties. Data come from a sample of 182 parents who transitioned to parenthood in 2008–2010 and their young children. Results of longitudinal path analyses indicated mothers’ perceptions of maternal gate closing at 3-months postpartum were associated with greater dysregulation (β = .21, 95% CI [.08, .35], p = .002) and externalizing (β = .25, 95% CI [.10, .41], p = .001) in 26-month-old toddlers. Observed maternal gate opening at 3-months postpartum predicted lower dysregulation (β = −.18, 95% CI [−.32, −.05], p = .008) in 26-month-old toddlers. Observed fathers’ parenting quality did not mediate associations between maternal gatekeeping and child social–emotional difficulties. However, a statistically significant interaction between infant negative affect and observed maternal gate opening emerged as a predictor of toddler dysregulation, such that the adjusted negative effect of observed maternal gate opening on toddler dysregulation was strongest when infant negative affect was low. Statistically significant interactions between fathers’ perceptions of gate closing and infant negative affect also emerged as predictors of toddler dysregulation and externalizing. Infants high in negative affect exposed to maternal gate closing were at the greatest risk for externalizing and dysregulation difficulties. Implications for maternal gatekeeping theory and research are discussed.

Essays on intergenerational transmission in Korea

This dissertation studies the effects of parents' resources on children's labor market outcomes in Korea. The educational structure in Korea has changed substantially with rapid economic growth over the last several decades. There is a substantial difference between parents and children's average educational attainment. Because of economic development and schooling difference between parents and children, the intergenerational transmission of economic status may show different patterns than in developed countries. In addition, parents' health problems may play a role to limit children's educational attainment by reducing parenting quality during early childhood or adolescent periods. The dissertation estimates various causal channels of parents' economic resources to children. The dissertation consists of three chapters. In Chapter 1, I investigate the intergenerational relationship of earnings and education in Korea with particular attention to the trajectories of vocational and academic high school graduates. I estimate that the intergenerational earnings elasticity in Korea is 0.4, which is consistent with previous studies. When educational attainment of fathers and child are controlled, parental earnings are positively associated with children's earnings, although the association decreases to 0.08 (0.10) for sons (daughters). Sons whose fathers completed only a vocational high school degree have a greater chance of attending college than sons whose fathers completed only an academic high school degree. A college degree of a father helps children to have higher earnings and to increase their chance of attending and graduating from college. Father's education has a stronger impact on children's earnings when children's educational attainment is higher. A vocational high school degree reduces a child's probability of attending and completing college compared to academic high school graduates. However, notwithstanding this educational disadvantage, vocational graduates do not appear to suffer substantially in terms of expected earnings, relative to academic high school graduates. In the second chapter, I estimate the average causal effects of parents' educational attainment on the educational attainment of children in Korea using a new method, the nonparametric bounds approach. This approach does not require the assumption of homogeneous and linear effects of parental schooling. It also uses relatively weaker assumptions, monotone treatment response and monotone treatment selection, than assumption underlying other methods and is more amenable to testing. With the additional assumption of monotone instrumental variables, it provides the tightest bounds on the average treatment effects (ATE) that an increase in parents' education increases children's educational success. It also shows the effects are overestimated in simple regression models. The third chapter examines the effects of parental health on children's educational attainment. Parental illness changes parenting quality both by affecting family wealth and in other ways that influence children's labor market outcomes. Parental health problems can especially have relatively larger impacts on children's education when children are in either primary or secondary education than other periods. Longitudinal data from the Korean Labor Income Panel Survey, for the period 1998 - 2018, enables me to examine parental illness effects in the early childhood and adolescent period on ultimate educational achievement. Empirical application in this paper pays attention to situations that each parent's either unexpected or chronic health problems change children's human capital.

Targeting Parenting Quality to Reduce Early Life Adversity Impacts on Lifespan Cardiometabolic Risk

Mounting evidence that early life adversity (ELA) exposures confer risk for cardiometabolic disease over the lifespan motivated this narrative review to examine parenting quality as a potential intervention target to reduce ELA exposures or mitigate their impact as a way of reducing or preventing cardiometabolic disease. We describe findings from the limited number of family-based intervention studies in ELA-exposed children that have tested parenting impacts on cardiometabolic health outcomes. We then describe the implications of this work and make recommendations for future research that will move this field forward.

Supporting families to protect child health: Parenting quality and household needs during the COVID-19 pandemic

Background Supportive parenting is critical for promoting healthy child development in the face of stressors, such as those occurring during COVID-19. Here, we address a knowledge gap regarding specific household risk factors associated with parenting quality during the pandemic and incorporate first-person accounts of family challenges and needs. Methods Mixed methods were applied to data collected between April 14th - 28th, 2020 from the “Parenting During the Pandemic” survey. Participants included 656 primary caregivers (e.g., mothers, fathers, foster parents) of least one child age 1.5–8 years of which 555 (84.6%) responded to at least one parenting questionnaire. Parenting quality was assessed across stressful, negative, and positive parenting dimensions. Household risk was examined across pandemic- linked (e.g., caregiver depression, unmet childcare needs) and stable factors (i.e., annual income, mental illness history). Significant correlates were examined with regressions in Mplus. Thematic analysis identified caregiver challenges and unmet needs from open-ended questions. Findings Caregiver depression, higher child parity, unmet childcare needs, and relationship distress predicted lower-quality parenting. Caregiver depression was the most significant predictor across every parenting dimension, with analyses indicating medium effect sizes, ds = .39 - .73. Qualitative findings highlighted severe strains on parent capacities including managing psychological distress, limited social supports, and too much unstructured time. Interpretations Lower quality parenting during COVID-19 is associated with multiple household and pandemic risk factors, with caregiver depression consistently linked to parent- child relationship disruptions. Focused efforts are needed to address caregiver mental health to protect child health as part of the pandemic response.

Convergent and Discriminant Validity of Retrospective Assessments of the Quality of Childhood Parenting: Prospective Evidence From Infancy to Age 26 Years

Retrospective self-report assessments of adults’ childhood experiences with their parents are widely employed in psychological science, but such assessments are rarely validated against actual parenting experiences measured during childhood. Here, we leveraged prospectively acquired data characterizing mother–child and father–child relationship quality using observations, parent reports, and child reports covering infancy through adolescence. At age 26 years, approximately 800 participants completed a retrospective measure of maternal and paternal emotional availability during childhood. Retrospective reports of childhood emotional availability demonstrated weak convergence with composites reflecting prospectively acquired observations ( R2s = .01–.05) and parent reports ( R2s = .02–.05) of parenting quality. Retrospective parental availability was more strongly associated with prospective assessments of child-reported parenting quality ( R2s = .24–.25). However, potential sources of bias (i.e., depressive symptoms and family closeness and cohesiveness at age 26 years) accounted for more variance in retrospective reports (39%–40%) than did prospective measures (26%), suggesting caution when using retrospective reports of childhood caregiving quality as a proxy for prospective data.