The Effect of Maternal Engagement in Their Children’s Distance Learning on Parental Stress and Offspring’s Internalizing and Externalizing Symptoms During COVID-19 School Closure

Abstract

The present study aimed to evaluate the effect of maternal involvement in children’s home-based learning activities during the COVID-19 lockdown on mothers’ parenting stress, the quality of maternal care perceived by offspring, and the level of children’s internalizing/externalizing symptoms. This study recruited 415 subjects from the general population. To assess parenting stress, mothers were administered the Parenting Stress Index–Short Form; to assess children’s perceived quality of maternal care, this study used the Parental Bonding Inventory; and the Child Behavior Checklist/6–18 was used to assess internalizing/externalizing symptoms in children. Correlations showed that the amount of time spent by the mother supervising children’s self-study was highly and positively correlated with parental stress and offspring’s externalizing (but not internalizing) symptoms, and highly and positively correlated with the subscale of maternal overprotection in the children’s perceived quality of maternal care. Moreover, the multiple regression analyses conducted based on the above significant correlations showed that the amount of time spent by the mother overseeing children’s study was associated with parental stress, children’s externalizing symptoms, and maternal overprotection. Overall, the current study contributes to showing the burden families had to face as a result of school closures and accompanying distance learning during the COVID-19 epidemic.

1. Introduction

Several governments worldwide imposed the closure of schools during the 2020 lockdown to limit the spread of the COVID-19 virus, and it has been estimated that this measure affected millions of children and families. While children were prevented from attending school and meeting their peers, most countries recommended that teachers organize distance learning through videoconferencing platforms and/or send lesson materials via email to parents, asking for their supervision of pupils’ work. [1]. Importantly, parents were also forced to stay home during that period and, in many cases, worked remotely. This created severe difficulties for parents in organizing their own work while simultaneously supervising their children’s study activities. Accumulating research shows that the unprecedented event of the pandemic and its consequences on daily life can be considered a powerful stressor, particularly for families with school-aged children, who had to balance working from home with childcare and education [2]. Before the pandemic, several studies had already examined the effects of parental involvement on children’s learning and family well-being, showing that moderate and supportive participation was generally associated with better scholastic outcomes and emotional adjustment, whereas excessive or controlling involvement could lead to parental stress and conflictual family dynamics (e.g., [2,3]). The COVID-19 crisis, however, introduced a radically different context in which parental engagement became mandatory and sustained over time, often under conditions of heightened uncertainty and psychological distress. During the COVID-19 pandemic, with schools closed, face-to-face learning was abruptly suspended, and distance learning was implemented (and, in some cases, improvised), creating an unprecedented situation in which both parents and children were forced to reorganize family routines [3]. In general, it has been shown that in the pandemic period, psychological well-being in mothers, fathers, and children was poorer than before the pandemic [4], and individuals perceived greater distress, which, in turn, tended to lead to lower parenting quality [5]. Some studies proposed that parental involvement in children’s distance learning was associated with perceived parental distress, low quality of parent–child interactions, and internalizing/externalizing problems in offspring [6,7]. Moreover, it has been demonstrated that at least one-third of children involved in distance learning during the COVID-19 lockdown have been actively assisted by parents (especially by mothers) in the activities linked to school lessons [8]. For instance, mothers structured learning sessions or monitored children’s learning and assisted their children with the tasks assigned by the teachers. This led to increased time spent in school-related activities by parents with their children compared with the pre-pandemic period. In fact, Steinmayr and colleagues [9] have shown that during the pandemic lockdown, almost 80% of parents spent more than one hour per day in school-related activities with their children, whereas in the pre-pandemic period, only 24% of parents did so.

At first glance, the increased parental involvement could appear as a positive fact. Actually, augmented childcare during COVID-19 has been suggested to have had a good influence on offspring’s emotional well-being [10] and parents’ involvement in school has been shown to be favorably associated with offspring academic and emotional/behavioral outcomes [11]; conversely, other authors found that parents’ aid in their children homework was adversely connected with children’s academic achievement [12], increased negative affect, and maladaptive interactions with children [13]. Distance learning will undoubtedly constitute a large part of students’ learning activities in the coming years, regardless of the pandemic or of other unpredictable factors [14]. This very rapid implementation of relatively new learning practices must consider the possible consequences on the family system, which is crucial for child development [15]. Therefore, research focusing on the impacts of distant education on parent–child relationships and parental and offspring’s emotional/behavioral functioning is urgently needed [16].

Bearing these considerations in mind, the present study aimed to evaluate the effect of maternal involvement in children’s home-based learning activities during the COVID-19 lockdown on mothers’ parenting stress, the quality of maternal care perceived by offspring, and the level of children’s internalizing/externalizing symptoms.

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. Participants

During the lockdown imposed by the government to mitigate the spread of the COVID-19 virus (March 2020), a sample of parents of children aged 8–10 years was recruited (n = 516) from the general population via social media advertisement (e.g., through Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp). Recruitment announcements specified the voluntary and anonymous nature of participation and directed interested parents to an online survey platform where informed consent was obtained prior to data collection. Participation was open for approximately four weeks. An online convenience sampling was operated to collect the data. All parents who decided to participate in this study signed a written informed consent form that clearly explained the aims and procedures of this study. The present study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Department of Dynamic, Clinical, and Health Psychology at Sapienza University of Rome (protocol N. 809/2020), in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.

For the purposes of this study, we recruited mothers and children aged 8–10 years who were attending distance learning; mothers and/or children without physical or mental disorders; and children and/or parents who were not following a psychiatric or psychological treatment. Consistent with the above inclusion criteria, n = 12 mothers with a mental and/or physical disability, n = 24 mothers of children with psychiatric and/or physical diagnoses, and n = 18 mothers and n = 16 children who were undergoing psychological and/or psychiatric treatment were excluded from the recruited sample. Moreover, n = 41 subjects were excluded due to missing or incomplete data in the assessment measures. Overall, out of the 516 initially recruited participants, 111 were excluded (12 mothers with disabilities, 24 mothers of children with clinical diagnoses, 18 mothers and 16 children under treatment, and 41 with incomplete data), resulting in a final sample of 405 mothers (78.5% of the initial respondents). No significant demographic differences were found between included and excluded cases (with an attrition of 21.5%). The final sample consisted of n = 405 mothers (Mage = 41.24; SD = 7.13) with children aged 8–10 years (Mage = 9.11; SD = 1.38; 51.4% females). All mothers lived in Italy, and the vast majority of them were married (81.4%). Eighty-three percent of mothers had a high school or higher level of education, and they reported a household income of EUR 55,000–75,000 per year.

2.2. Procedures and Measures

All the mothers who accepted to participate in this study signed the written consent form and filled out an ad hoc online questionnaire that included sociodemographic information and self-report and report-form measures. Children filled out an online questionnaire measuring their perceived quality of maternal care. Adapting Thorell et al.’s work [8] to the aims of this study, mothers were asked to rate their own engagement in children’s distance learning, specifying the time spent on the following activities: (1) mother–teacher contact, (2) supervising peer-to-peer contact (between offspring and fellow students), (3) supervising children’s self-study, and (4) parent-to-parent contact. Mothers reported the approximate amount of time (in hours per day) dedicated to each activity, referring specifically to a typical weekday during the lockdown period. Responses were provided as numerical estimates and subsequently averaged across participants. Although this measure relied on self-report and may have been affected by recall bias, this approach was widely adopted in similar studies conducted during the pandemic when objective time tracking was not feasible (e.g., [8]). To assess parenting stress, mothers filled out the Parenting Stress Index–Short Form (PSI-SF). The PSI-SF is a self-report tool composed of 36 items, and the scores are summed to calculate the total score. Higher scores indicate greater parenting stress levels. In this study, the internal consistency of the scale was good (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.88). To assess children’s perceived quality of maternal care, this study used the Parental Bonding Inventory [17] in its Italian version [18]. The PBI is composed of two sub-scales, comprising maternal warmth/care and maternal overprotection. Children are asked to report how true each statement is with regard to their own experience on a four-point scale. This measure showed a good internal consistency in this study (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.82). The Child Behavior Checklist/6–18 [19] was used to assess internalizing/externalizing symptoms in children. This tool is a 113-item report-form questionnaire that asks mothers to describe specific emotional/behavioral problems of their child during the preceding six months. Items are rated on a three-point Likert scale ranging from 0 (not true) to 2 (very true or often true). It encompasses eight scales: anxious/depressed, withdrawn/depressed, somatic complaints, social problems, thought problems, attention problems, rule-breaking behavior, and aggressive behavior, grouped into the subscales of internalizing problems and externalizing problems.

2.3. Statistical Analyses

All analyses were performed using SPSS software, version 26 (IBM, Armonk, NY, USA). Preliminarily, the reliability of the measures and the normality of the distribution of the study variables were controlled. Missing data within the retained sample were minimal (<5% per variable) and handled using pairwise deletion to maximize the use of available information. Analyses were repeated on complete cases to ensure robustness, yielding comparable results. Then, mean scores were determined for each variable, and significant correlations between them were identified through Pearson’s correlation analyses. Furthermore, multiple regression analyses were carried out to recognize the main effects of maternal engagement in offspring distance learning, parenting stress, children’s perceived quality of maternal care, and offspring’s internalizing/externalizing symptoms. The latter analysis was conducted considering mothers’ and children’s ages as possible covariates.

3. Results

With regard to maternal engagement, the results showed that mothers spent a mean of 2.4 h per day (SD = 1.8) on their children’s distance learning. Specifically, on average, they spent 16% of their time on mother–teacher contact, 12% of their time supervising peer-to-peer contact, 63% of their time supervising their children’s self-study, and 9% of their time on parent-to-parent contact. The mean scores of parenting stress, children’s perceived quality of maternal care, and internalizing/externalizing symptoms in children are shown in

Table 1. Mean scores of parenting stress, children’s perceived quality of maternal care, and internalizing/externalizing symptoms in children.

	M (SD)
PSI-SF	75.21 (17.5)
PBI maternal warmth/care	33.1 (2.3)
PBI overprotection	16.3 (2.1)
CBCL internalizing	28.2 (3.2)
CBCL externalizing	17.5 (2.6)
Sample sizetotal	N = 405

Note. PSI = Parenting Stress Index–Short Form; PBI = Parental Bonding Inventory; CBCL = Child Behavior Checklist.

.

Pearson’s correlations showed that the amount of time spent by the mother supervising children’s self-study was highly and positively correlated with parental stress and offspring externalizing (but not internalizing) symptoms, and highly and positively correlated with the subscale of maternal overprotection in the children’s perceived quality of maternal care. The time spent on mother–teacher contact, supervising peer-to-peer contact, and parent-to-parent contact was not correlated with any other variables (

Table 2. Pearson correlation coefficients between the starting theoretical model variables.

	1.	2.	3.	4.	5.	6.	7.	8.	9.
1. Time/mother–teacher contact	1
2. Time/supervising peer-to-peer contact	0.11	1
3. Time/supervising study	0.09	0.05	1
4. Time/parent-to-parent contact	0.06	0.06	0.05	1
5. Parent’s PSI-SF	0.05	0.07	0.28 **	0.02	1
6. PBI warmth/care	0.04	0.05	0.03	0.01	0.07	1
7. PBI overprotection	0.04	0.06	0.19 **	0.05	0.001	0.04	1
8. CBCL internalizing	0.07	0.01	0.06	0.03	0.02	0.01	0.06	1
9. CBCL Externalizing Risk Index	0.04	0.06	0.17 **	0.03	0.07	0.05	0.02	0.07	1

Note. PSI = Parenting Stress Index–Short Form; PBI = Parental Bonding Inventory; CBCL = Child Behavior Checklist. ** p < 0.01.

).

Only the variables that showed significant correlations with maternal supervision time—namely, parental stress, offspring’s externalizing symptoms, and the PBI overprotection subscale—were entered into the regression model. The PBI warmth/care subscale was not included because it did not display significant associations with the predictor variable. As shown in

Table 3. Multiple regression analyses predicting maternal parental stress, children’s externalizing symptoms, and maternal overprotection.

	R2	Time/Supervision Study
		β	SE	95% CI	T	p
PSI-SF	0.19	0.23	0.09	[0.06, 0.40]	2.4	0.009
PBI/overprotection	0.18	0.33	0.11	[0.12, 0.55]	2.91	0.008
CBCL/externalizing	0.18	0.29	0.12	[0.05, 0.52]	2.51	0.009

Note. PSI = Parenting Stress Index–Short Form; PBI = Parental Bonding Inventory; CBCL = Child Behavior Checklist.

(which shows standardized coefficients), the multiple regression analyses conducted based on the above significant correlations showed that the amount of time spent by the mother overseeing their children’s study was associated with parental stress, offspring’s externalizing symptoms, and maternal overprotection. The model accounted for 21% of the variance (limited). For each regression model, unstandardized and standardized coefficients, standard errors, 95% confidence intervals, and exact p-values were computed. All reported effects were statistically significant at the 0.05 level or lower. The complete results are displayed in Table 3.

4. Discussion

The present study intended to assess the possible role of mothers’ involvement in children’s home-based learning activities during the COVID-19 lockdown on maternal parenting stress, the quality of maternal care perceived by offspring, and the level of children’s internalizing/externalizing symptoms.

The results of this study showed that mothers spent a mean of almost two and a half hours engaged with their children’s schoolwork at home, especially supervising their offspring’s self-studying. This amount of time was significantly greater than the average time dedicated by mothers to their children’s home learning before the pandemic [20]. This was expected, as the COVID-19 lockdown forced parents and children to share the same domestic environment for virtually all day, every day, so that maternal involvement in children’s activities was anticipated to increase. Some authors have proposed that blended learning (part at school and part at home in distance learning, with parents supervising) may not just be an emergency measure taken to stem the spread of the virus; rather, it could constitute a model for future learning strategies [21,22]. The present study, however, showed that maternal engagement in children’s studying was correlated with parental stress and children’s high externalizing symptoms. Although this study did not gather data on this aspect, we can hypothesize that mothers and children experienced negative affects, disagreements, and divergences, which may have led to conflictual interactions, eventually resulting in parental and offspring distress, with aggressive behaviors and rule breaking. This would be in line with other studies, which posited that during the lockdown, several parents did not feel it as their responsibility to motivate their child for distance learning, and over 20% of them also used coercive strategies to convince children to study, with the consequence of amplified levels of stress, social isolation, reduced perceived well-being, and domestic conflicts [10]. The above correlations were found by a large bulk of the previous literature (see [23], for example) that widely demonstrated that parents’ stress can spill over to children, taking the form of psychopathological symptoms and poor quality of parent–child interactions. In our sample (although possible bidirectional effects should be considered), children also perceived a lower quality of caregiving if their mothers spent greater time supervising their at-home schooling.

When parents and children are unable to communicate sensitively and jointly, the child may have poor emotional and behavioral self-regulation and develop maladaptive symptoms over time. Other research, however, did not uncover similar associations or any significant linkages between distance learning and negative parental emotion or worse parent–child relationships [24]. Children who practically never work on schoolwork may require more rigorous supervision at home (e.g., to combat boredom or prevent mischief), which may have a detrimental impact on the parent–child connection.

Overall, the current study demonstrates one of the burdens that families face as a result of school closures and accompanying distance learning during the COVID-19 epidemic. Given the significance of a positive parent–child relationship for healthy child development and family functioning [25,26,27], the current findings highlight the need for measures and interventions to reduce family strain during the COVID-19 pandemic and other crises. Children’s effective adaptability and well-being have been linked to well-regulated structures, roles, and routines at school [28] and within the home system [29].

As a result, during the COVID-19 pandemic, parents should engage in building new rituals and routines in everyday life to mitigate the downstream effects of disturbances in family life. In this aspect, offering autonomous support to children might help parents and families cope with the pandemic [30]. Furthermore, online interactions and/or live contact between teachers and students may relieve parents of the responsibility of becoming educators in their children’s learning process. As a result, research in various countries has documented the importance of and parents’ desire for more teacher–student and teacher–parent interactions and live communication [31].

Nevertheless, the majority of the school employees polled in Italy reported that schools are not technically suitably prepared for web-based learning [3], underscoring the need for the Italian educational system to invest in a stronger digital infrastructure. Another way to aid parents during distant learning is to spread information about the learning process in general and how to assist children with school chores (e.g., how to structure learning sessions or how to explain certain curricula). It is possible that enhancing parents’ knowledge in this area may assist in improving parents’ perceived support of schools and teachers, optimizing the sufficiency of parental engagement in their children’s remote learning, and, therefore, reducing the possibility of parent–child disputes.

From an applied perspective, these findings suggest several directions for schools and policymakers. First, guidance programs and psychoeducational workshops could be developed to help parents support children’s learning without resorting to coercive or conflictual strategies. Second, increasing the amount of live teacher–student interactions through synchronous online lessons or virtual tutoring may substantially reduce the supervision burden on parents. Finally, sustained investment in digital infrastructure and teacher training is essential to ensure that distance learning systems are effective, accessible, and less dependent on parental mediation during future emergencies. The current study is limited in various respects. First, this study was performed using a convenience sample of Italian parents, limiting the generalizability of the findings, and it did not have a longitudinal design. Therefore, no causal conclusions can be drawn, also because only self-report measures were used, which may have increased shared-method variance. In addition, because both maternal stress and children’s emotional–behavioral symptoms were reported by mothers, informant bias cannot be ruled out. It is possible that higher maternal stress levels may have led to over- or underestimation of children’s difficulties. Future studies should, therefore, adopt multi-informant designs—including fathers, teachers, or independent observers—and, when feasible, incorporate observational or clinician-rated measures to provide a more objective assessment of child functioning. Furthermore, the sample was favorably chosen (high education and high wealth levels), probably because less socioeconomically well-off parents did not have time to complete the survey [32]. This might have resulted in an underestimation of the amount of stress, since low-income and lower-middle-class parents were shown to have higher instrumental and financial hardship during COVID-19 [33]. Socioeconomic factors were not controlled for in the regression analyses; nonetheless, current research suggests that high-income and -education groups, in particular, have worse well-being throughout [34] and are more likely to suffer stress over organizing and arranging distant learning than lower socioeconomic level parents. Moreover, it should be noted that the current sample was primarily composed of women, and attrition reduced representativeness. Despite evidence that mothers and fathers report relatively comparable parent–child relationships [35,36,37,38,39], past research reveals that mother–child and father–child interactions are not the same. Future studies should include multiple caregivers to obtain a more comprehensive understanding of family dynamics during similar circumstances.