Parental Influence on Children’s Self-Regulation and Emotional Behavior in the COVID-19 Context
Hai Yue Luo
University of Alberta
Psychology 323
28th September 2020
Dr. Wendy Hoglund
Parental Influence on Children’s Self-Regulation and Emotional Behavior in the COVID-19 Context
A study was conducted in 2016 by Siu et al. on the role and relationship of maternal mindfulness on the child’s social behavior. This study examined mindfulness, the parent-child relationship, and child behavior in a Chinese sample. This study aimed to establish the role of parents in shaping their children’s social behavior and the implications of the parent-child relationship on the emotional state and development of a child.
This study was conducted in China on 216 mothers, mostly aged between 31 to 40 years. The mothers were drawn from six kindergartens in china. These mothers had at least one child each. The children who were particularly observed were aged between the ages of 3 and 6 years. The mothers were picked by convenience sampling. The researchers used questionnaires mainly as their tool for data collection. They distributed the questionnaires through the schools then later collected them through the kindergartens. The research studied the following three parameters: parent-child relationship, mindfulness, and the child’s social behavior.
The results indicated that maternal mindfulness had a positive impact on the child’s social behavior and a negative impact on the child’s negative social behavior. This demonstrates that a mother’s presence and indulgence in their child’s emotions and social behavior influenced the child’s social behavior and their ability to self-regulate their behavior. The involvement of the parent is important in the child’s social development. This is because the child and mother can form a bond of attachment; hence the child learns how to emulate their parent. This is further supported by Brumariu (2015), who states that parent-child attachment shapes how a parent shapes their child’s emotional reactions, hence shaping their social behavior. However, this study failed to factor in the exigent and stressful circumstances of an unexpected circumstance like COVID-19 and the effect this would have on the parent-child relationship, hence how it would shape the child’s social behavior.
DOI: 10.1007/s12671-016-0491-2
Criticism
The COVID-19 pandemic is a completely unexpected yet massive impactful occurrence in the world currently. The pandemic’s impact stretches across a wide variety of social issues both in the personal (like employment) and interpersonal (like parent-child relationships) contexts. Spinelli et al. (2020) performed a study on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on parents’ and children’s psychological niche in families in Italy. They concluded that the parents’ main stressor, hence their relationship with their children, is quarantine.
During quarantine, parents have to perform the role of both a parent and a professional because they work from home. Intertwining, these two have proven to be quite stressful. Additionally, the study found that other stressful factors were juggling between these two and finding time for themselves, their partners, and the activities they used to do before the pandemic struck.
Siu et al. overlooked the effect such a social setting would have on the parent and child’s relationship. Spinelli et al. (2015) state that more stressed parents find it difficult to understand their child’s needs and respond appropriately. Therefore, it is important to note that these parents fail to be involved and mindful of their children, not on their own accord, but due to circumstantial personal constraints. Therefore, the effect is that these children end up feeling less understood and indulged and end up acting in aggressive and angry ways. This has been termed as an ambivalent attachment, where the child acts out to attract the attention of their attachment figure (Brumariu, 2015), in this case, the parent. Spinelli et al. (2015) also speculate that these overwhelmed parents cannot find the appropriate ways to address their children’s fears and concerns, hence leading to distress evidenced by the child’s emotional and behavioral problems.
Parents’ involvement in their children plays an important role in the children’s emotional and behavioral regulation. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has many stresses, particularly on the parents, which ultimately leads to the neglect of children by their parents, which in turn leads to poor social behaviors by the children. Therefore, I think it is extremely important to acknowledge the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on parents’ willingness and likelihood to engage and be involved in their children’s social and emotional life.
References
Brumariu, L. E. (2015). Parent–child attachment and emotion regulation. New directions for child and adolescent development, 2015(148), 31-45.
Siu, A. F., Ma, Y., & Chui, F. W. (2016). Maternal mindfulness and child social behavior: The mediating role of the mother-child relationship. Mindfulness, 7(3), 577-583.
Spinelli, M., Lionetti, F., Pastore, M. & Fasolo, M. (2020). Parent’s stress and children’s psychological problems in families facing the COVID-19 outbreak in Italy. Front. Psychol. 11:1713