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Parenting stress among new parents before and during the COVID-19 pandemic

BACKGROUND: The outbreak of COVID-19 has forced parents to deal with a challenging crisis, which may have increased their stress levels, negatively affecting their parenting and putting their infants at risk of abuse. OBJECTIVE: To examine the contribution of the pandemic to parenting stress, explor...

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Autores principales: Taubman – Ben-Ari, Orit, Ben-Yaakov, Ofir, Chasson, Miriam
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier Ltd. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9754858/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33930664
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2021.105080
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author Taubman – Ben-Ari, Orit
Ben-Yaakov, Ofir
Chasson, Miriam
author_facet Taubman – Ben-Ari, Orit
Ben-Yaakov, Ofir
Chasson, Miriam
author_sort Taubman – Ben-Ari, Orit
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: The outbreak of COVID-19 has forced parents to deal with a challenging crisis, which may have increased their stress levels, negatively affecting their parenting and putting their infants at risk of abuse. OBJECTIVE: To examine the contribution of the pandemic to parenting stress, exploring differences in parenting stress among new parents before and during the crisis, the role of background and personal variables, and the possibility that the study phase moderated the associations of gender and personal resources with parenting stress. METHOD: Israeli parents (n = 1591) whose first child was 3–12 months old were recruited twice through social media: in 2019, before the spread of COVID-19 (n = 985); and in March 2020, during the pandemic (n = 606). RESULTS: Sociodemographic variables, perception of the childbirth as traumatic, lower meaning in life, higher search for meaning, less marital satisfaction, and study phase all contributed to greater parenting stress. In addition, the association between gender and stress was moderated by study phase, with fathers reporting a greater increase in stress during the pandemic. Moreover, only during the pandemic did fathers report higher parenting stress than mothers. CONCLUSIONS: The findings highlight the vulnerability of new parents of young infants to parenting stress during the crisis, and the special attention which should be paid to fathers. They indicate the value of strengthening meaning in life and preserving good marital relationships as resources that help to cope with the heightened parenting stress at this time.
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spelling pubmed-97548582022-12-16 Parenting stress among new parents before and during the COVID-19 pandemic Taubman – Ben-Ari, Orit Ben-Yaakov, Ofir Chasson, Miriam Child Abuse Negl Article BACKGROUND: The outbreak of COVID-19 has forced parents to deal with a challenging crisis, which may have increased their stress levels, negatively affecting their parenting and putting their infants at risk of abuse. OBJECTIVE: To examine the contribution of the pandemic to parenting stress, exploring differences in parenting stress among new parents before and during the crisis, the role of background and personal variables, and the possibility that the study phase moderated the associations of gender and personal resources with parenting stress. METHOD: Israeli parents (n = 1591) whose first child was 3–12 months old were recruited twice through social media: in 2019, before the spread of COVID-19 (n = 985); and in March 2020, during the pandemic (n = 606). RESULTS: Sociodemographic variables, perception of the childbirth as traumatic, lower meaning in life, higher search for meaning, less marital satisfaction, and study phase all contributed to greater parenting stress. In addition, the association between gender and stress was moderated by study phase, with fathers reporting a greater increase in stress during the pandemic. Moreover, only during the pandemic did fathers report higher parenting stress than mothers. CONCLUSIONS: The findings highlight the vulnerability of new parents of young infants to parenting stress during the crisis, and the special attention which should be paid to fathers. They indicate the value of strengthening meaning in life and preserving good marital relationships as resources that help to cope with the heightened parenting stress at this time. Elsevier Ltd. 2021-07 2021-04-23 /pmc/articles/PMC9754858/ /pubmed/33930664 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2021.105080 Text en © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Article
Taubman – Ben-Ari, Orit
Ben-Yaakov, Ofir
Chasson, Miriam
Parenting stress among new parents before and during the COVID-19 pandemic
title Parenting stress among new parents before and during the COVID-19 pandemic
title_full Parenting stress among new parents before and during the COVID-19 pandemic
title_fullStr Parenting stress among new parents before and during the COVID-19 pandemic
title_full_unstemmed Parenting stress among new parents before and during the COVID-19 pandemic
title_short Parenting stress among new parents before and during the COVID-19 pandemic
title_sort parenting stress among new parents before and during the covid-19 pandemic
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9754858/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33930664
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2021.105080
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