Moderating Effects of Parenting Stress and COVID-19 Pandemic Impacts on Relations Between Harsh Discipline and Child Behavior Problems

The present study examined the dual moderating effects of parenting stress and negative COVID-19 pandemic impacts on the link between parental harsh discipline and child behavior problems. Mothers and children aged 2–6 years (M = 49.68 months, 51.03% female; N = 339) in the United States participated online via Amazon Mechanical Turk during the COVID-19 pandemic (Summer or Winter 2020). Mothers reported on harsh discipline, parenting stress, negative COVID-19 impacts, and children’s internalizing and externalizing problems. As hypothesized, results showed a significant three-way interaction effect such that parenting stress and negative COVID-19 impacts exacerbated the positive relation between harsh discipline and child behavior problems, however, only for internalizing problems. Children had the highest levels of internalizing problems when harsh discipline, parenting stress, and negative COVID-19 impacts were higher; additionally, parenting stress still exacerbated the positive relation between harsh discipline and internalizing when pandemic impacts were lower. For externalizing problems, two-way interaction results revealed that positive relations between harsh discipline and externalizing were weaker when pandemic impacts were higher, suggesting that pandemic stressors altered these well-established effects. Findings suggested that proximal familial risks and broader environmental risks interact in complex ways to influence children’s mental health difficulties, and that interventions to reduce parenting stress may ameliorate children’s internalizing problems, especially when additional environmental stressors are present.