Children's Emotion Regulation and Subjective Stress During the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Intergenerational Perspective Among Racially and Economically Minoritized Mother-Child Dyads in the United States.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted family life, with disproportionate impacts on families who are racially and economically marginalized. Decades of developmental research emphasize how caregivers' Objective: The study's goal was to examine both COVID-related and lifetime stressors and their associations with maternal perception of children's emotional regulation and distress in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: In a sample of 72 mothers and their children (M = 7.94 years) who are American, low-income, and predominantly Black, we examined whether parent-reported maternal and child factors co-contributed to children's emotion regulation and COVID-related distress. Between November 2020-March 2021, mothers reported on their emotion regulation difficulties, their child's emotion regulation, their child's lifetime exposure to stressors, their child's exposure to COVID-specific stressors, and their own and their child's perception of COVID-related disruptions as distressing. Results: Our results parse differential predictors: children's lifetime stressor exposure and maternal emotion regulation difficulties predicted children's emotion regulation; children's exposure to COVID-related stressors, maternal subjective COVID-related stress, and maternal emotion regulation difficulties predicted children's subjective COVID-related stress. Conclusions: Although limited by reliance on parent report, findings highlight the importance of considering children's experiences of distress and emotion regulation during the COVID-19 pandemic in broader contexts, including the context of parent's own regulatory capacities and perceptions of stress, as well as children's lifetime experiences of stressors.