Parent–Child Conflict During Homeschooling in Times of the COVID-19 Pandemic: A key Role for Mothers’ Self-Efficacy in Teaching

Abstract

To contain the COVID-19 pandemic schools have been closed in many countries. Children stayed at home and were assisted by their parents with their schoolwork. Evidently, homeschooling puts extra demands on parents. We presumed that parents’ sense of self-efficacy in teaching would play a key role in how they cope with this extra task of homeschooling. In particular, we hypothesized that parental characteristics (social-economic status (SES) and Stress) and social-contextual factors (home chaos; school support) would contribute to parents’ teaching self-efficacy and that, in turn, a lower efficacy would result in more parent-child conflicts during home schooling. Participants were 173 mothers of children in kindergarten or early elementary schools, who provided information for one of their children about interpersonal conflicts around schoolwork before and during school closure. Additionally, they reported on their self-efficacy in teaching, perceived stress during lockdown, home chaos, and school support. Path analyses indicated that mothers’ perceived stress and household chaos were associated with a lower sense of self-efficacy in teaching, whereas school support, but not family SES, was related to a higher level of teaching self-efficacy. Higher levels of self-efficacy beliefs, in turn, were associated with a lower degree of parent–child conflict during schoolwork, even after controlling for prior levels of conflict. We discuss how the results of this study might be used to foster parents’ self-efficacy in teaching and thereby decrease the amount of parent-child conflict during parents’ support with schoolwork.

Perspectives of Parents of Children with Special Educational Needs: Self-Efficacy and School Supports During COVID-19

“…Given the focus of the self-efficacy scale in the present study on parent support for the learning of their children, this finding is surprising. In fact, one study conducted with mothers of young children without disabilities during COVID-19 found a significant positive relationship between learning-related self-efficacy and perceived academic supports from school (de Jong et al, 2021). It may be that the social-emotional aspects that promote learning, such as motivation, interest, pro-social behaviours, and relationships, were more necessary or impactful for families during pandemic at-home learning.…”

“…They also hold and convey more positive beliefs about competency to their children, who in turn develop greater self-efficacy and ultimately experience better academic outcomes (e.g., Bandura et al, 1996;O'Sullivan et al, 2014;Tazouti & Jarlégan, 2019). Higher self-efficacy has also been found to be related to low parent-child conflict during school work (de Jong et al, 2021) and to be influenced by socio-economic and family-related variables. Some research has shown that parents of students with ADHD have lower self-efficacy for learning, (e.g., Ogg et al, 2020;Rogers et al, 2009); however, very little literature has explored the learning-related self-efficacy of parents of students with special education needs more broadly.…”

“…Given the key role of parents in their child's learning during school closures, their self-efficacy in supporting their child in completing school work and engaging in school-provided learning opportunities is of particular importance. While parent self-efficacy for learning has been explored in a small number of studies throughout the pandemic (e.g., de Jong et al, 2021;Panaoura, 2020), very few have been published that relate specifically to students with special education needs.…”

Mothers as Teachers: The New Role of Mothers in the New Normal

“…Nonetheless, as teachers, mothers gained understanding and learned coping and benefiting skills for their dual function. In the context of the COVID 19 pandemic, de Jong et al (2021) noted that evidently the homeschooling of children had put extra demands on mothers who, according to Darmody et al (2020) and Moore et al (2020), assumed more responsibilities in the household. On the other hand, family stress involves stressors that affect the family such as physical and mental health concerns, economic, intensified child-parent relationships, and home schooling (Wu & Xu, 2020).…”

Associations of parenting daily hassles with parents’ mental health during the COVID-19 school closure

“…Disrupted family routines and increased parenting duties may lead parents to experience additional stress and face more daily parenting hassles. For example, evidence showed that both parents and children reported that irritation with family members as one of the most common daily difficulties during the COVID-19 pandemic ( Janssen et al, 2020 ); some studies also reported increased parent-children conflict due to lockdown orders ( de Jong et al, 2021 ; Grigoropoulos, 2021 ). Given that cumulative daily hassles were significant ( Crnic and Greeberg, 1990 ), the main aim of this study was to discover the daily parenting hassles with school closures and kindergarten shut downs during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown and examine how these daily hassles contribute to parents' mental health.…”