Contemporary parenting and its association with parents’ well-being in the face of COVID-19: The mediating role of guilt.

Abstract

This study examines the association between the contemporary role of parenting and the wellbeing of its agent-the parent. In particular, I focus on parental feelings of guilt as a mechanism underlying the association between parenting styles and difficulties to adjust to changing circumstances, in the face of COVID-19. The sample was recruited through social networks and included 382 Israeli parents, mostly educated mothers (ages 23-57, average education 16.4 years) who reported being the primary caregiver in a committed relationship. All participants filled out online self-report questionnaires that addressed their parenting style, parental guilt feelings, and difficulties to adjust in the face of COVID-19. The analysis of these questionnaires indicated a significant direct association between hostile/coercive parenting and adjustment difficulties, and an indirect significant association between engaged/supportive parenting and adjustment difficulties through parental guilt feelings. These findings are discussed in light of the Conservation of Resources Theory and in light of parental contemporary social imperatives. Public Policy Relevance StatementSocial imperatives that shape contemporary parenting force parents to attempt to be the "perfect" parents by intensively meeting their children's needs. This study emphasizes the toll that such parenting takes on its agents-the parents-as it can provoke feelings of guilt that are associated with poor well-being.

The Mediating Role of Parenting Style in the Relationship between Parents’ Openness to Different Ways of Thinking and Child Anxiety

“…The total score for each parenting style was an average score of the relevant items. The scale’s internal consistency was proven to be very good in the Israeli context (for example, see, [ 39 , 40 ]); in the present study, Cronbach’s alpha was 0.68 for the hostile/coercive parenting style and 0.88 for the engaged/supportive parenting style.…”

“…Finally, the internal consistency of the hostile/coercive subscale was slightly lower (0.68) than recommended in the social sciences (0.7) (see, for example, [ 55 ]). Nevertheless, this difference is negligible, and the measure is widely used in the field of parenting [ 40 ].…”