Parents' coping behaviors and mental health during the COVID‐19 pandemic

• Published date: 01 December 2023
• Author: Andrew E. Koepp,Jennifer M. Barton,Hannah M. Berendzen,Haley E. Rough,Elizabeth T. Gershoff
• Date: 01 December 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12929

RESEARCH

Parents’coping behaviors and mental health during

the COVID-19 pandemic

Andrew E. Koepp

1

|Jennifer M. Barton

2

|

Hannah M. Berendzen

1

|Haley E. Rough

1

|Elizabeth T. Gershoff

1

1

Department of Human Development and

Family Sciences, The University of Texas at

Austin, Austin, TX

2

Family Resiliency Center, University of

Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL

Correspondence

Andrew E. Koepp, The University of Texas at

Austin, 108 E. Dean Keeton Street, Stop

A2702, Austin, TX 78712-1248, USA.

Email: andrew.koepp@utexas.edu

Funding information

This research was supported by grants from

the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute

of Child Health and Human Development

(P2CH042849 and T32HD007081) awarded to

the Population Research Center at the

University of Texas at Austin, and by the

National Academy of Education/Spencer

Dissertation Fellowship awarded to A. E.

Koepp.

Abstract

Objective: To understand how parents of young children

coped with stress during the first year of the COVID-19

pandemic.

Background: Families with young children faced substan-

tial stress during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, relatively

few studies have examined parents’mental health during

the pandemic and the behaviors parents have used to cope

with their stress.

Method: The current study surveyed 199 parents (76%

women, M

age

=33 years) of children aged 2 to 4 years from

across the United States between September and December

2020 about their COVID-related stressand coping behav-

iors since stay-at-home orders began inMarch 2020.

Results: The coping behavior that parents most commonly

endorsed was spending time with their children, a strategy that

frequently made parents feel better. Successful coping (engag-

ing in behaviors that made parents feel better) was positively

associated with better mental health, regardless of parents’

COVID-related stress. Distraction and unsuccessful coping

were not significantly associated with parents’mental health

as a main effect. However, parents who engaged in more

unsuccessful coping under conditions of high COVID-related

stress reported greater symptoms of anxiety and depression.

Conclusion: Although the COVID-19 pandemic presented

novel stressors for parents, it also presented new opportu-

nities to spend time with family, which may have helped

parents cope with the stress of the pandemic.

Implications: Young children may be considered an asset

in the family system that prompts parents to engage in

activities that make them feel better.

Author note: An earlier version of this project was presented as a poster at the annual meeting of the American Psychological

Association, August 2021.

Received: 6 October 2022Revised: 18 May 2023Accepted: 30 May 2023

DOI: 10.1111/fare.12929

© 2023 National Council on Family Relations.

2318 Family Relations. 2023;72:2318–2333.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/fare

KEYWORDS

anxiety, coping, COVID-19 stress, depression, parent mental health

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic brought major disruptions to Americans’

daily lives. After the World Health Organization (2020) declared the spread of COVID-19 a

pandemic, states and localities across the United States quickly put into place mitigation efforts

to reduce the spread of the coronavirus. The resulting lockdowns and school and workplace clo-

sures affected almost all families (American Psychological Association [APA], 2020a). Parents

reported school closures, a lack of physical activity, and social isolation as some of the most

commonly experienced impacts of COVID-19 (Lee et al., 2021). Many parents also reported

impacts such as losses of jobs, income, or childcare (Patrick et al., 2020); fear of family mem-

bers getting sick or dying; and separation from friends and family (Gadermann et al., 2021).

Parents were forced to juggle working from home or possibly seeking new employment while

simultaneously caring for their children during a global pandemic.

It is thus not surprising that the onset of the pandemic led to significant increases in parents’

stress (Achterberg et al., 2021; Gassman-Pines et al., 2020) or that parents reported the highest

levels of stress among American adults early in the pandemic (APA, 2020b). Nearly three quarters

of parents reported feelings of stress about either themselves or a family member getting coronavi-

rus, having their basic needs met, and adjusting to their new routines and managing online learning

for their children (APA, 2020b). Managing COVID-related stress may have been especially difficult

for parents with young children (ages 0–5 years), who reported experiencing greater stress and burn-

out than parents of older children (Patrick et al., 2020; Wiemer & Clarkson, 2022).

As posited by the family stress model (Conger & Conger, 2002), this increase in stress can

negatively influence parents’mental health and their parenting behaviors. Before the pandemic,

objective and perceived stress had been linked to increased parental depression (see Masarik &

Conger, 2017) and disruptions in parenting (Fox & Gelfand, 1994), both of which have been associ-

ated with poor child outcomes (Conger & Elder, 1994; Conger et al., 2002;Fox&Gelfand,1994).

During the pandemic, parents who reported more hardships also experienced reduced mood and

sleep quality (Gassman-Pines et al., 2020). More pandemic-related stress has also been linked with

higher symptoms of anxiety and depression among parents (Brown et al., 2020; Lee et al., 2021).

Parents’anxiety and depression are of concern both for the risks to parents’physical health

(Carney & Freedland, 2003; Mykletun et al., 2007) but also for their potential to disrupt positive

parenting behaviors (Kashdan et al., 2004; Lovejoy et al., 2000; Taraban et al., 2017;Vreeland

et al., 2019), which in turn can negatively affect their children (Gunlicks & Weissman, 2008).

Parents may engage in a variety of behaviors to cope with their stress and maintain their

mental health (Gloria & Steinhardt, 2016). According to the transactional stress and coping the-

ory (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984), how they choose to cope is often dependent on parents’

appraisals of the stressors and their resources to cope. For example, an individual may appraise

a stressor as less stressful when there are more resources available for coping. Coping includes

both cognitive and behavioral strategies to manage stress (Moos & Schaefer, 1993; Väisänen

et al., 2018). Cognitive coping strategies may include rumination or reflection, whereas behav-

ioral coping strategies involve behavioral engagement or action such as activities with family,

reading books, exercising, or home improvement. Although some studies have examined how

parents’cognitive coping strategies (e.g., rumination and reflection) predict parents’stress dur-

ing the COVID-19 pandemic (Achterberg et al., 2021), less attention has been paid to behav-

ioral coping strategies—that is, the specific behaviors or activities that parents use to cope.

Beyond just identifying what parents do to cope, it is important to understand how effective

their coping strategies are in making them feel better (Uy et al., 2022) to appreciate the extent

to which the pandemic impacted parents’mental health.

PARENT COPING AND MENTAL HEALTH DURING COVID-192319