The COVID-19 pandemic is placing demands on parents that may amplify the risk of parents' distress and poor parenting. Leveraging a prepandemic study in New Zealand, the current research tested whether parents' psychological distress during a mandated lockdown predicts relative residual changes in poorer parenting and whether partner support and cooperative coparenting buffer this potentially detrimental effect. Participants included 362 parents; 310 were from the same family (155 dyads). Parents had completed assessments of psychological distress and parenting prior to the pandemic and then reported on their distress, parenting, partner support, and cooperative coparenting during a nationwide COVID-19 lockdown. Parents' distress during the lockdown predicted relative residual increases in harsh parenting, but this effect was buffered by partner support. Parents' distress also predicted residual decreases in warm/responsive parenting and parent-child relationship quality, but these effects were buffered by cooperative coparenting. Partner support and cooperative coparenting are important targets for future research and interventions to help parents navigate challenging family contexts, including COVID-19 lockdowns.

COVID-19 lockdowns have required many working parents to balance domestic and paid labor while confined at home. Are women and men equally sharing the workload? Are inequities in the division of labor compromising relationships? Leveraging a pre-pandemic longitudinal study of couples with young children, we examine gender differences in the division and impact of domestic and paid labor during a nationwide COVID-19 lockdown ( N = 157 dyads). Women did more of the parenting and housework, whereas men engaged in more paid work and personal time, during the lockdown. Couple members agreed that women’s share of parenting, housework and personal time was unfair, but this did not protect women from the detrimental relationship outcomes associated with an inequitable share of domestic labor. A greater, and more unfair, share of parenting, housework and personal time predicted residual increases in relationship problems and decreases in relationship satisfaction for women. Exploratory analyses indicated that men who were the primary caregiver or were not working fulltime also experienced negative relationship outcomes when they did more housework and parenting. These results substantiate concerns that the COVID-19 pandemic may undermine advances toward gender equality by reinforcing inequitable divisions of labor, thereby damaging women’s relationship wellbeing.

The COVID-19 pandemic presents acute, ongoing relationship challenges. The current research tested how (1) preexisting vulnerabilities assessed prior to the pandemic (attachment insecurity) and (2) stress as couples endured a mandated quarantine predicted residual changes in relationship functioning. Controlling for prequarantine problems, relationship quality, and family environment, greater partners’ attachment anxiety predicted greater relationship problems, lower relationship quality, and a less stable and cohesive family environment when people were experiencing more stress. Greater partners’ attachment avoidance predicted lower problem-solving efficacy and family cohesion. The effects of partners’ preexisting vulnerabilities and pandemic-related stress demonstrate the utility of key models in relationship science in identifying who is at most risk of relationship problems in the unprecedented context of a mandated quarantine. The results emphasize that the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on relationship functioning will be shaped by the characteristics of partners with whom people are confined with during the pandemic.

The current research extends prior research linking negative emotions and emotion regulation tendencies to memory by investigating whether (a) naturally occurring negative emotions during routine weekly life are associated with more negatively biased memories of prior emotional experiences-a bias called projection; (b) tendencies to regulate emotions via expressive suppression are associated with greater projection bias in memory of negative emotions; and (c) greater projection bias in memory is associated with poorer future well-being. Participants (N = 308) completed a questionnaire assessing their general tendencies to engage in expressive suppression. Then, every week for 7 weeks, participants reported on (a) the negative emotions they experienced across the current week (e.g., "This week, I felt 'sad'"), (b) their memories of the negative emotions they experienced the prior week (e.g., "Last week, I felt 'sad'"), and (c) their well-being. First, participants demonstrated significant projection bias in memory: Greater negative emotions in a given week were associated with remembering emotions in the prior week more negatively than those prior emotions were originally reported. Second, projection bias in memory of negative emotions was greater for individuals who reported greater tendencies to regulate emotions via expressive suppression. Third, greater projection bias in memory of negative emotions was associated with reductions in well-being across weeks. These 3 novel findings indicate that (a) current negative emotions bias memory of past emotions, (b) this memory bias is magnified for people who habitually use expressive suppression to regulate emotions, and (c) this memory bias may undermine well-being over time. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

The current research tests the links between emotion regulation and psychological and physical health during the COVID-19 pandemic. In Study 1, parents (N = 365) who had reported on their psychological and physical health prior to the pandemic completed the same health assessments along with their use of emotion regulation strategies when confined in the home with their school-aged children during a nationwide lockdown. In Study 2, individuals (N = 1,607) from a nationally representative panel study completed similar measures of psychological and physical health and use of emotion regulation strategies 1-year prior to the lockdown and then again during the lockdown. Accounting for pre-pandemic psychological health, greater rumination and emotional suppression were independently associated with poorer psychological health (greater depressive symptoms and psychological distress, lower emotional and personal well-being), even when controlling for the emotional challenges of the pandemic (emotion control difficulties, perceived support; Studies 1 and 2) and a range of demographic covariates (Study 2). Greater rumination was also associated with greater fatigue in both studies, but greater rumination and emotional suppression were only independently associated with poorer perceptions of physical health in Study 2. The results for cognitive reappraisal were mixed; positive associations with personal well-being and general health only emerged in Study 2. The results provide evidence that key models in affective science help explain differences in psychological and physical health within the throes of a real-world demanding context, and thus offer targets to help facilitate health and resilience during the pandemic (and other crises).