RAPID: The COVID-19 Pandemic and Changes in the Stress Response: Identifying Risk and Resilience in Adults and Children

Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences - For families with young children, the COVID-19 pandemic constitutes a major life stressor that is accompanied by heightened daily demands, including lack of childcare, altered work expectations, job insecurity, and social distancing. All of these are compounded by pressing concerns about the direct and indirect impacts of the disease on family members? health. An abundance of research has documented the negative effects of stress and instability within families and on child development in particular. There is relative lack of data, however, on factors that may protect children against the effects of such an unprecedented set of stressors. The current study will evaluate risk and resilience factors that influence how families respond to the stress, and identify family characteristics and parenting behaviors that promote children?s well-being, focusing on those from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds who are most impacted by these unprecedented threats to health and social stability.

Prospective studies investigating the effects of a pandemic on psychological and physiological functioning in U.S. families have the potential to greatly contribute to our understanding of how children and adults cope with stress. The current study will capitalize on an ongoing longitudinal study of stress and adaptation in families with young children. The research will address fundamental questions about the effects of a chronic stressor on psychological adjustment, as well as the biological mechanisms by which stress affects health. Importantly, by examining patterns of socialization and variation in parenting, results of the study will highlight parental behaviors that may be protective. Utilizing a multi-method approach, the study incorporates questionnaire, and observational and physiological assessments, during the early period of the pandemic and approximately six months later. Comparing these data to those collected prior to the pandemic onset will allow modeling of trajectories, and the possibility of testing mediating and moderating mechanisms. The study will examine not only longitudinal change and individual variability in stress physiology and well-being, but also stress proliferation within families and the extent to which self-regulatory competencies and positive parenting including emotion socialization buffer against negative outcomes in children.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.