Parenting during the COVID‐19 pandemic: Insecure or unresolved attachment representation is a risk factor for harmful parenting behavior

• Published date: 01 December 2023
• Author: Franziska Köhler‐Dauner,Ute Ziegenhain,Miriam Kipping,Inka Mayer,Jörg M. Fegert,Anna Buchheim
• Date: 01 December 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12925

RESEARCH

Parenting during the COVID-19 pandemic: Insecure

or unresolved attachment representation is a risk

factor for harmful parenting behavior

Franziska Köhler-Dauner

1

|Ute Ziegenhain

1

|Miriam Kipping

1

|

Inka Mayer

1

|Jörg M. Fegert

1

|Anna Buchheim

2

1

Department of Child and Adolescent

Psychiatry/Psychotherapy, University of Ulm,

Ulm, Germany

2

Institute of Psychology, University of

Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria

Correspondence

Franziska Köhler-Dauner, Child and

Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy,

University Ulm Medical Centre, Steinhövelstr.

5, Ulm 89070, Germany.

Email: franziska.koehler-dauner@uniklinik-

ulm.de

Funding information

The study was funded by the

Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung

(grant no. 01KR1304A; BMBF, 2013–2016,

additional interim funding 2017).

Abstract

Background: The current COVID-19-pandemic confronted

a large number of young families with stressors. For mothers

with a history of childhood maltreatment (CM), the distress

during the current pandemic added to their already increased

risk for a less sensitive, maltreating parenting behavior.

Objective: This study aims to investigate whether maternal

attachment representation mediates the relationship between

maternal CM experiences and changes in parenting behavior

during the pandemic.

Method: As a part of a longitudinal study, mothers’experi-

ences of CM and their attachment status were assessed.

For the present study, 92 mothers (mean age: 38.14 years,

SD =4.08; attachment representation: 36% secure, 64%

insecure and unresolved) completed an online SARS-CoV-

2-pandemic survey assessing their parenting behavior since

the beginning of the pandemic.

Results: The odds of an insecure maternal attachment

representation in adulthood increased with higher levels of

CM load. Mediation analyses revealed that maternal

attachment representation fully explained the relationship

between maternal CM load to changes in sensitive, endan-

gering, and overall parenting quality.

Conclusions: CM has lasting effects on maternal adult

attachment representations. Mothers’attachment repre-

sentations contribute to a further understanding of inter-

generational transmission mechanisms of CM later in

adulthood through a more endangered parenting approach

in challenging times.

Received: 13 December 2021Revised: 27 January 2023Accepted: 5 February 2023

DOI: 10.1111/fare.12925

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits

use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or

adaptations are made.

© 2023 The Authors. Family Relations published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of National Council on Family Relations.

Family Relations. 2023;72:2297–2317. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/fare 2297

Implications: The results of this study should be consid-

ered in the development of programs offered to families

facing stressful circumstances. In particular, we recom-

mend increased implementation of telephone- or web-

based programs.

KEYWORDS

COVID-19, maternal attachment representation, parental childhood

maltreatment (CM), parenting behavior, SARS-CoV-2-pandemic,

transgenerational transmission

The COVID-19 pandemic brought numerous challenges and restrictions to people worldwide.

Children’s mental health was significantly threatened because of the changes in their

psychosocial environment, such as contact restrictions and the resulting isolation (Fegert,

Vitiello, et al., 2020). These issues may be especially apparent for young families who are

confronted with various challenges and measures taken to contain the pandemic (Halvorsen

et al., 2020). Families faced many restrictions on their daily lives, from recommendations of

increasing physical distance, sudden school closures of schools and childcare facilities

(Calear et al., 2022), and disruption of community programs (Walsh, 2020)toincreasing

pressure from recession or unemployment (Patrick et al., 2020), as well as homeschooling

and lack of social support from grandparents (Fegert, Vitiello, et al., 2020). Especially for

young families and young mothers, these restrictions represented a challenge to find new

solutions to problems that arise (Calear et al., 2022 & Patrick et al., 2020). Here the term

young mother is used to describe teenage mothers, or women giving birth at age 19 years or

younger (Agnafors et al., 2019), or mothers giving birth at age 25 years or younger (Lavista

Ferres et al., 2020). Overall, this term refers to women giving birth in adolescence or early

adulthood.

In addition to the constraints for young families, social distancing measures (e.g., school

closure and prohibition of public gatherings) taken to reduce the transmission of any disease

by minimizing physical contact between infected and healthy individuals (European Centre

for Disease Prevention and Control, 2020) caused by the pandemic posed considerable

challenges, especially for the youngest members of society. Lifestyle changes, such as virtual

education instead of classroom teaching; the closure of recreational clubs, churches, and

other institutions; and the loss of face-to-face social interaction with friends, teachers,

and other resource persons left many children in a situation where emotional, social, and

infrastructural support are limited. Thus, crucial developmentally relevant parameters of

everyday life were not available.

Not all families were affected in the same way by the negative consequences of the

pandemic. Social, emotional, and cognitive consequences may have been more acutely felt by

children lacking a stable parental home (Larsen et al., 2021), indicating that these children were

at particularly high risk of suffering the consequences of the pandemic. This assumption is

supported by studies showing that young children in particular depend on a stable and secure

family environment in times of stress and uncertainty that characterize a crisis such as the cur-

rent COVID-19 pandemic (Schofield et al., 2013).

The parental role sometimes poses a challenge for mothers and fathers in nonpandemic

times (Deave et al., 2008), and thus it is evident that not all parents may be able to meet the

needs associated with of the parental role in the demanding times of a pandemic. One reason is

that the psychological stress caused by the pandemic leaves parents with limited resources to

recognize and respond to the children’s needs (Prime et al., 2020). Parental stress in this context

means a specific form of stress that arises when a parent perceives their own resources and

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