Parenting during the Pandemic: The Importance of Co-Parenting and Parental Support and Hostility to Youth Resilience

Background/Purpose: The COVID-19 pandemic negatively affected countless U.S. families. Yet, youth and families have been resilient. Resilience is not just an individual trait, but also a result of supportive relationships within one’s family and community (Perry & Winfrey, 2021). Our study examined how family interactions (parent-child, mother-father) during the pandemic were related to youth resilience in a small Midwest community. Results were used to assist community partners in developing policies/practices to support families. The primary research aim was to examine how mother and father perspectives of co-parenting and supportive and hostile parenting were related to youth resilience.

Methods: Data were drawn from a larger mixed method study (N=76 families; 123 individuals) of parents of children attending schools (K-12) in a Midwest community. Convenience sampling of parents occurred via community partners (churches, schools, agencies) through flyers, word of mouth, and social media. Participants (N=47 mother/father dyads) completed an online survey about how COVID-19 impacted their parenting and their oldest child’s resilience (M_age = 11.40, SD = 3.92). Measures included resilience, using the KINDL^R (Ravens-Sieberer & Bullinger, 2000), parent supportiveness and hostility using the MAPS (Parent & Forehand, 2017), and co-parenting using the CRS (Feinburg et al., 2012). Actor-partner interdependence modeling using mother/father dyadic data was used to examine the relations between co-parenting, supportive and hostile parenting, and youth resilience.

Results: Actor and partner effects of supportiveness on parents’ perceptions of youth resilience were moderated by parent gender. The relationship between parents’ own supportiveness and perceived youth resilience was positive for mothers (b = .15, p = .02) but negative for fathers (b = -.10, p = .06). The relationship between partner supportiveness and perceived youth resilience was positive for mothers (b = .11, p = .08) but negative for fathers (b = -.17, p = .003). Actor and partner effects were significant for hostility, but not moderated by gender. For mothers and fathers, increases in their own hostility (b = -.23, p < .001) and partner hostility (b = -.08, p = .03) were associated with decreased perceived youth resilience. There was a significant actor—but not partner—effect for co-parenting. For both parents, more positive co-parenting was related to greater perceived child resilience (b = .08, p = .04).

Conclusions and Implications: Maternal supportiveness (MS), parent hostility, and co-parenting were significantly related to youth resilience during the pandemic. Partner effects for MS underscore the importance of including both parents’ perspectives when researching how parenting affects youth. Whereas MS increased perceived child resilience among mothers, MS decreased perceived child resilience among fathers. Hostility was negatively, and co-parenting was positively, associated with youth resilience. This presentation will address research implications, such as including multiple perspectives/reporters (mother, fathers, children) in youth resilience research and how to translate findings in ways that are meaningful to stakeholders interested in enacting community change. We will also cover practical implications. Our results suggest that practitioners’ efforts to help parents limit hostility and engage in healthy co-parenting may bolster youth resilience during adverse events, such as a pandemic.