Reciprocal effects between young children's negative emotions and mothers' mental health during the COVID‐19 pandemic

• Published date: 01 October 2022
• Author: Yonggang Wei,Lu Wang,Qiao Zhou,Li Tan,Yao Xiao
• Date: 01 October 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12702

RESEARCH

Reciprocal effects between young children’s

negative emotions and mothers’mental health

during the COVID-19 pandemic

Yonggang Wei

1

|Lu Wang

2

|Qiao Zhou

1

|Li Tan

3

|Yao Xiao

1

1

Chongqing Early Childhood Education

Quality Monitoring and Evaluation Research

Center, Chongqing Normal University,

Chongqing, China

2

The Yubei Kindergarten, Yubei District,

Chongqing, China

3

Chengdu Third Kindergarten, Chengdu,

Sichuan, China

Correspondence

Qiao Zhou, Chongqing Early Childhood

Education Quality Monitoring and Evaluation

Research Center, Chongqing Normal

University, Chongqing 401331, China.

Email: 17838124@qq.com

Funding information

This study was funded by Chongqing Social

Science Planning Project (no. 2019YBJJ102),

Chongqing Education Science 13th Five-Year

Plan Special Key Project (no. 2020-YQ-09),

and Chongqing University Outstanding

Talents Support Program.

Abstract

Objective: To investigate the relations between young

children’s negative emotions and their mothers’mental

health during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic caused the public

a certain degree of psychological symptoms, and family

environments and relations have been changed dramati-

cally as a result. The relations between young children’s

negative emotions and their mothers’mental health have

not been sufficiently determined for the context of a

pandemic or other large-scale crises.

Method: A survey was administrated on 8119 Chinese

mothersof3-to6-year-oldchildrenwiththeSymptom

Checklist 90 and the Child Negative Emotion Questionnaire.

Results: The canonical correlation results indicated that

there were covariation trends between young children’s

anger and their mother’s obsessive–compulsive symptoms

and hostility, children’s fear and mothers’phobic anxiety,

and children’s tension and mothers’interpersonal sensitiv-

ity and depression. These correlations were all positively

significant.

Conclusion: During the COVID-19 pandemic, the predic-

tive power of young children’s negative emotions to their

mothers’mental health was greater than that of the

reverse.

Implications: This study provides a scientific guidance on

the regulation of young children’s negative emotions and

the improvement of mothers’mental health during the

pandemic as well as potential emergencies in the future.

KEYWORDS

COVID-19, mental health, mother–child interaction, negative emotion

Received: 30 June 2021Revised: 13 November 2021Accepted: 16 January 2022

DOI: 10.1111/fare.12702

© 2022 National Council on Family Relations.

1354 Family Relations. 2022;71:1354–1366.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/fare