Pandemic parenting: predictors of quality of parental pandemic practices during COVID–19 lockdown in Serbia

Abstract

The aim of our study was to explore relations between parents’ and children’s fear of COVID–19, parents’ dispositions (emotion regulation, self-efficacy, the anxiety trait) and their distress (due to the pandemic, the national state of emergency [NSE] and curfews) and how these variables have been affecting the quality of parental pandemic practices during the COVID–19 NSE in Serbia. Our online questionnaire was filled in by 376 parents and one of their children aged 7 to 19 years. Path analysis was used to analyze data. Higher levels of cognitive reappraisal and self-efficacy directly contribute to a higher quality of parental pandemic practices during NSE. Indirectly, parents’ fear, pandemic distress, and parents’ cognitive anxiety symptoms increase children’s fear, consequently raising the quality of parental pandemic practices. Pointing out protective and risk factors that may affect pandemic parenting during NSE as well as mechanisms of their contributions, our findings draw attention to the importance of parents’ negative emotions regulation and the effects of children’s emotions on the quality of parental pandemic practices during an ongoing pandemic.