Covid-19, anxiety, parenting and child emotion regulation: A cross-cultural study with Brazilian and Portuguese Parents

Abstract

Objectives: Parental anxiety and parenting styles have been linked with children's emotional adjustment. Overall, the pandemic had relevant psychological impacts, such as anxiety symptoms, particularly on parents who struggled with the added burden on work-family life balance. This cross-cultural study aims to explore how COVID-19 anxiety and parenting styles impact children's emotion regulation in two different Portuguese-speaking countries. Methods: Data was collected online from a sample of 190 Brazilian and 109 Portuguese parents (80.9% women), whose children had a diverse range of ages (M = 8.38; SD = 4.30). The applied protocol included the COVID-19 Anxiety Scale (CAS), the Parental Authority Questionnaire for Parents (PAQ-P), and socio-demographic questions. Hierarchical multiple regression models tested how COVID-19 anxiety and parenting styles (authoritative, authoritarian or permissive) predict child emotional adjustment (emotion regulation or lability/negativity). Results: In the Brazilian sample, parental COVID-19 anxiety (β = 0.16) and a more authoritarian parenting style (β = 0.17) predicted higher children’s lability/negativity; even controlling the effects of children’s age (R2 = 0.11). In the Portuguese sample, where parental COVID-19 anxiety was quite lower [M = 1.55 versus 3.13; t (279.821) = -3.760, p < 0.001], children’s greater negativity was only predicted by a low authoritative parenting style (β = -0.30; R2 = 0.22). Conclusions: A better understanding of the impact of parents’ COVID-related anxiety and parenting styles on children´s emotional dysregulation in different cultural contexts stresses the importance of families' interventions in other potential epidemics within a contextual framework.