Reciprocal effects between young children's negative emotions and mothers' mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic.

OBJECTIVE

To investigate the relations between young children's negative emotions and their mothers' mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic.

BACKGROUND

The COVID-19 pandemic caused the public a certain degree of psychological symptoms, and family environments and relations have been changed dramatically as a result. The relations between young children's negative emotions and their mothers' mental health have not been sufficiently determined for the context of a pandemic or other large-scale crises.

METHOD: A survey was administrated on 8119 Chinese mothers of 3- to 6-year-old children with the Symptom Checklist 90 and the Child Negative Emotion Questionnaire.

RESULTS

The canonical correlation results indicated that there were covariation trends between young children's anger and their mother's obsessive-compulsive symptoms and hostility, children's fear and mothers' phobic anxiety, and children's tension and mothers' interpersonal sensitivity and depression. These correlations were all positively significant.

CONCLUSION

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the predictive power of young children's negative emotions to their mothers' mental health was greater than that of the reverse.

IMPLICATIONS: This study provides a scientific guidance on the regulation of young children's negative emotions and the improvement of mothers' mental health during the pandemic as well as potential emergencies in the future.