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Maternal distress, parenting stress, maladaptive parenting and children’s problematic media use in China: evidence from 2022 spring in Shanghai

BMC Public Health volume 24, Article number: 1857 (2024) Cite this article

Abstract

The COVID-19 lockdown has forced young children to spend more time on media and significantly impacted their mothers’ mental health. This study explored how mothers’ individual distress influences children’s problematic media use during the Shanghai citywide lockdown caused by COVID-19. Data were collected from 1889 Chinese mothers (Mage = 34.69 years, SD = 3.94 years) with preschoolers aged 3–6 years (Mage = 4.38 years, SD = 1.06 years; 49.0% boys) via an online survey. The statistical analyses relied on SPSS Statistics version 26.0 and macro-program PROCESS 3.3. to investigate the associations and mediation analysis among all the study variables. The results indicated a positive association between maternal distress and children’s problematic media use, mediated by parenting stress and maladaptive parenting. Specifically, the serial mediation analysis revealed that high levels of maternal distress exacerbate parenting stress, which in turn leads to maladaptive parenting practices. These maladaptive practices subsequently increase problematic media use in preschool children. The findings highlighted that parents need to enhance their ability to manage risk and promote mental health during periods of significant stress and routine disruption to reduce children’s problematic media use.

Peer Review reports

Excessive media use has increased during the COVID-19 lockdowns in response to remote working, online learning, social interaction, and entertainment [1, 2], which makes the significant increase in global children’s screen time an important public health problem [3, 4]. Several studies have recently focused more on the influencing factors of excessive media use [5, 6] during COVID-19 lockdowns, and problematic media use (PMU) is less focused on in Chinese preschool children. Nevertheless, it is important to distinguish between excessive media use and PMU [7], as there is no conclusive evidence to suggest that screen time alone has a direct negative impact on the psychosocial development of children [8]. Screen time is also known as screen exposure time, which refers to the time spent by an individual on a series of activities related to screen electronic media [9]. Excessive media use refers to consuming media in quantities beyond what is considered healthy or balanced, but it is not necessarily always harmful. Excessive media use refers to consuming media in unhealthy quantities, and screen time is a broader term encompassing all activities involving screens, which can become problematic if excessive. Moreover, problematic media use focuses on the harmful effects of media consumption on individual developmental functioning. According to Domoff et al. [7], individual impaired functioning is critical in distinguishing screen exposure/excessive use from a problematic level of media use. Thus, we focus on the problematic media use of preschool children and go beyond the literature that mainly focuses on the influence of general parenting styles [10] and consider COVID-19-related parental distress and parenting stress.

Problematic media use in childhood

Increasing numbers of children are growing up in households with media technologies, and they spend an amount of time on different devices [11], exceeding the recommendation of the World Health Organization (WHO) that children under 2 years old should avoid using screens, and children aged 2–5 should not exceed 1 hour per day [12]. According to the 51st Statistical Report on China’s Internet Development published in March 2023, the number of Internet users in China had reached 1.067 billion by December 2022, with 4.4% being children under the age of ten [13]. Research has found that by age 4 years, between one-third and three-quarters of children have access to their own mobile devices [14, 15]. Radesky et al. [15]found that younger children are acquiring their first mobile devices, and using them for several hours a day. According to the displacement theory, excessive media use may replace time spent participating in activities critical for children’s social-emotional development, particularly activities involving physical movement and interpersonal communication, and may thus harm children’s mental health and well-being [16, 17].

Problematic media use (PMU) in childhood has been defined as excessive use leading to dysfunction in a major domain of a child’s development: social, behavioral, or academic [18]. Individuals must experience conflict or disturbance in psychosocial functioning to indicate a severe problem with screen media use, not just the number of hours used [18]. As Bronfenbrenner [19] proposed, children develop within a series of environmental systems that interact with each other. In other words, children do not grow or develop in a vacuum—parents and other caregivers, peers, and technology all exert influence on children’s growth and development. Based on Bronfenbrenner’s conceptualization, Domoff et al., [7] incorporate social learning and behavioral principles (e.g., reinforcement) to propose the Interactional Theory of Childhood Problematic Media Use (IT-CPU), which showed that household chaos or lack of routines, structure in the home [20], and parental stress have effects on children’s PMU and also pointed that parents’ perception of stress levels likely contribute to greater PMU via using screens as a behavior management tool [21]. Therefore, we expected that family dynamics would play a significant role in shaping children’s PMU.

Parental distress during the COVID-19 lockdown

The COVID-19 pandemic was a remarkable occurrence that emerged unpredictably and raised a global public health issue. At the end of 2019, China received official reports of the first COVID-19 cases [22]. Cases in Shanghai began rising in March 2022, soon spiraling into the worst flare-up the country has seen since the initial outbreak in Wuhan in early 2020 [23]. From the end of February to May 30th, COVID-19 caused 6 hundred thousand people to be impacted, and Shanghai introduced a staggered lockdown in late March. This had expanded into a full citywide lockdown by early April that is keeping most of its 25 million residents, whether urban or rural, trapped at home [24], which is called a “super frozen city”. Alongside concerns about financial security, people had their daily routines disrupted indefinitely and were isolated from people and places that were part of their daily lives [25]. These changes seriously affected people’s mental health, especially psychological distress [26]. Therefore, investigating the COVID-19 lockdowns’ impact on parents and children represents a relevant and impactful issue.

Based on the study conducted by Kazak et al., [27] and Li et al., [28], parental distress associated with COVID-19 may be divided into two primary aspects: parents’ subjective overall distress connected to COVID-19 events and parents’ perceived distress of children. Both aspects are connected to the stress encountered by parents during the lockdown: the former general psychological distress caused by various stressors (e.g., financial challenges, concern for family members, and struggle to access food or medical care), as well as specific distress associated with taking increased parenting duties and responsibilities compared to before (e.g., paying attention to children’s physical and mental health, attending to children’s daily needs and managing online learning). According to Babore et al., [29], general psychological distress is caused by factors beyond childrearing, such as the broader social and environmental context, including routine obligations and responsibilities [30]. The specific distress is connected with parental role and parenting. In the context of COVID-19, the pandemic has affected the division of housework, parent-child relationship, and the physical and mental health of children and family members [31, 32] and brought significant psychological burden and distress to families [33], especially mothers [34]. During the epidemic, Chinese mothers reported more severe psychological distress and stress symptoms than before [35].

Parental distress and child problematic media use

Previous studies have found that maternal poor mental health (such as distress or depression) is associated with increased screen time among young children [36,37,38]. Mental health problems might make mothers use media as an ‘electronic babysitter’ to compensate for their lack of energy and fatigue, leading to women’s sedentary and increased frequency of using their phones, thus unintentionally increasing their children’s media exposure [39]. Distressed mothers are less successful in monitoring their children’s behaviors [39] and allow more interruptions from devices in their parent-child interactions [40], increasing the risk of children’s PMU. Because of parenting demands, parents in more chaotic environments and with greater stress levels may be less likely to supervise and manage their children’s media use [20]. Meanwhile, children from more chaotic homes and higher parenting stress have greater externalizing problem behaviors [41], and parents may be more likely to use media as a pacifying device [42]. Several studies suggested maternal distress or depression was positively associated with children’s excessive screen time [37, 38]. Thus, it is possible that parents who reported social disruption due to COVID-19 experienced heightened levels of distress [43], and parents may have less control over their children’s ability to maintain healthy behaviors in this circumstance [44]. On these grounds, it seems reasonable to hypothesize that COVID-19 maternal distress would be positively associated with children’s PMU.

Parental distress and child problematic media use: the mediating role of parenting stress

Parenting stress is distinct from stress in other realms of life (for example, work stress and marriage relationship stress). It refers to the bad experience of parents as a result of a perceived discrepancy between their parental responsibilities and available resources [45, 46]. Notably, the lockdown can cause isolation-related psychological distress for caregivers [32], especially for women [47, 48], which is associated with parenting stress [49]. According to the stress process model, the stressor pile-up caused by the crisis event (e.g., COVID-19) and additional stressors that occur over time (e.g., home isolation, work at home, child rearing and lack of family materials) created secondary stressors (e.g., parenting stress) [50]. Furthermore, when affected adults have young children, their ability to fulfill the parenting role is impaired, exacerbating the negative impact on children [51, 52]. The spillover hypothesis theory suggests the emotional or behavioral patterns of family members in one context may shift to another in a family system [53], meaning that the perceived stress (epidemic-related stress or stressors) from parents may spill over into parenting.

Besides, IT- CPU indicates that high parenting stress levels [54] also correspond to a longer duration of children’s PMU, firstly because parents use mobile devices to avoid uncomfortable family situations [55], this casually teaches children that using media as a self-regulation strategy is possible [7]. Children learn to imitate their parents’ behaviors at a young age [56]; it is likely that children learn about technology by observing their caregivers’ media use. Second, digital media can be a resource for child care in low-support settings [57]; parents may feel compelled to provide digital media when confronted with unreasonable and stressful demands or excessive parenting stress [58, 59]. As a result, we hypothesized that maternal parenting stress would independently mediate the association between COVID-19 maternal distress and children’s PMU.

Parental distress and child problematic media use: the mediating role of maladaptive parenting practices

Parenting practices are the observable actions that parents take about their children to help them participate in social activities and achieve goals [60, 61]. In this study, we focused on maladaptive parenting practices (including high levels of hostility, punishment, criticism, and proclivity) in the context of parents’ responses to stressful events. Experiences with COVID-19 distress may lead to parental maladaptive parenting practices. According to the general strain theory [62] and a social-ecological perspective [63], Pereda and Díaz-Faes [64] proposed that the cumulative effect of COVID-19 stressors can exacerbate parental anger and distress-increasing risk of intra-familial turmoil and potential for maladaptive parenting practices. It is proposed that maladaptive parenting comes in response to experienced distress, with parents displaying dysfunctional emotion-focused coping behaviors towards the child, behaviors that appear as yelling, insulting, threatening, and punishing [65].

Maladaptive parenting seemed to be a risk factor for mental disorders, more dysfunctional gaming, and sleep disorders [66], which may cause high levels of parent-child conflict and parental psychological control associated with high levels of media use and addiction in adolescents [67, 68]. Furthermore, studies have shown that maladaptive parenting is associated with high media usage time [10] in school-aged children and internet addiction [69] in secondary school students. Moreover, children and adolescents from maladaptive parenting have higher scores of symptoms of gaming addiction [66]. Based on what has been discussed, we hypothesize that maladaptive parenting would mediate the relationship between maternal COVID-19 distress and children’s PMU in preschoolers.

The serial mediating roles of parenting stress and maladaptive parenting practices

In particular, we assume that the two mediators – parenting stress and maladaptive parenting – might co-play a serial mediating role in the relationship between COVID-19 maternal distress and children’s PMU. The parental stress model [70] describes that parenting stress mediates the impact of environmental stresses on parenting outcomes such as harsh parenting and parent-child relationships. People’s mental health and general well-being have suffered as a result of the lockdown policy, stay-at-home orders, and other measures [26, 71], which may exacerbate parenting stress [72, 73]. When under a lot of parenting stress, parents will transfer their negative emotional experience to maladaptive parenting practices [74, 75], which leads to child maladjustment, such as externalizing problems [76] and internalizing symptoms [77].

In the context of COVID-19, parenting stress was usually related to parent-child interaction because both children and parents engage in various activities at home, such as providing all-day childcare while dealing with online education requirements, managing remote offices, and balancing the needs of many family members [51, 78]. According to research, when children are not in school, they are more bored, less physically active, and spend more time in front of screens [79], which may raise the possibility of conflict with parents and lead to parenting stress and maladaptive parenting. Since parents experienced multiple challenges directly related to parenting during the lockdown [78, 80], we speculated a serial mediation model in which parental distress influences children’s PMU indirectly, through parenting stress and maladaptive parenting.

The context of this study

Shanghai has implemented a citywide lockdown since April 1, 2022, with all adults and children trapped at home for about 3 months and conducting multiple rounds of universal nucleic acid tests, which were very special and unique prevention and lockdown measures worldwide. During the lockdown, families’ living conditions changed dramatically and abruptly. In the home, the words, practices, and responsibilities of parents become more important than usual. Parents, on the other hand, had been left to manage homeschooling, lifestyle and behavioral habits, and childcare in unprecedented ways.

Accordingly, this study is dedicated to understanding the underlying mechanisms between maternal distress and PMU in Chinese preschoolers. Our theoretical background to this examination stems from the IT-CPU, reflecting household chaos or lack of routines and parenting stress that influence children’s PMU [7]. It is, therefore, important to consider the role of the broad family environment and parental factors to fully understand the determinants of PMU.

Based on previous research, we proposed that maternal distress was positively associated with children’s PMU (H1), that maternal parenting stress would independently mediate the relationship between maternal distress and children’s PMU (H2), and that maladaptive parenting could mediate the relationship between maternal distress and children’s PMU (H3). Moreover, we also speculate that maternal distress influences child PMU indirectly through parenting stress and maladaptive parenting (H4). Our conceptual model of the current study is shown in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Proposed model for this study. Note “+ −” = positive or negative effect; A-F = paths

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Method

Participants

Participants were N = 1889 mothers (Mage = 34.69 years, SD = 3.94 years) with children aged 3–6 years (Mage = 4.38 years, SD = 1.06 years; 49.0% boys) from several kindergartens in urban areas in Shanghai, People’s Republic of China. Almost all children were Han Chinese, a predominant ethnic group (over 91.51% of the population) in China. Participants are all media users and their characteristics are presented in Table 1.

Table 1 Demographic characteristics of participants
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Procedure

The study informs participants of the study’s goals, and that participation is voluntary and can be withdrawn at any time. To prevent the spread of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 through droplets or contact, the recruitment letter and the questionnaires were released on Wenjuanxing (www.wjx.cn), the largest online survey platform in China. This online survey was distributed via the WeChat public platform and data were collected from May 1 to June 10, 2022. All Chinese users of WeChat and other social media platforms are welcome to view this survey and respond by scanning the QR code on the survey’s address or clicking the appropriate link. There are no personal identifiers stored or recorded in this study. Thus, there are no potential privacy risks. After completing the data collection, we used the information provided by the mothers to create evaluation results in the form of charts and text. These results, along with targeted family education suggestions, were sent to their email addresses. Our goal was to help mothers better understand their family environment and their child’s development.

Measure

Maternal COVID-19 distress

The Distress Scale from the COVID-19 Exposure and Family Impact Survey (CEFIS) [27] uses two items to assess how much distress caregivers have experienced due to the pandemic [81]. In the prior study, internal consistency was good for (α = 0.76) the Distress scale [27]. The first item asks the parent to rate how much distress they have experienced, and the second reflects the parents’ perception of how much distress the children in their family have experienced during the lockdowns. Both items use a 10-point scale. The two items were translated from English into Mandarin and back-translated into English, with discrepancies between versions resolved by bilingual faculties and graduated students from the psychology department at Shanghai Normal University. According to Eisinga et al., [82], the Spearman-Brown coefficient and the standardized alpha coefficient were the most reliable statistics for the two-item scale. In our study, Cronbach’s α for the CEFIS Distress Scale was 0.82, and the Spearman-Brown coefficient was 0.82.

Maternal parenting stress

Mothers completed the Chinese version of the Parenting Stress Index-Short Form (PSI-SF) developed by Abidin et al., [83]. This measure has demonstrated evidence of reliability and validity among parents of Chinese children [84]. The PSI-SF has 36 items pertaining to parental feelings and experiences in three dimensions: Parental Distress (PD; 12 items; e.g., “I often feel I cannot deal with things very well”), Parent-child Dysfunctional Interaction (PCDI; 12 items; e.g., “My child rarely does anything that makes me feel good”), and Difficult Child (DC; 12 items; e.g., “My child seems to be more of a cry baby than the most child”). Each subscale contains 12 items. The total PSI-SF score is considered an indicator of the parents’ overall experience of parenting stress. In the current study, Cronbach’s alpha values were 0.96 for the PSI-SF total score.

Maternal maladaptive parenting

Mothers completed the Chinese version of the Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire [85, 86]. This version of the PSDQ contained 26 items forming two stylistic patterns of parenting: adaptive parenting and maladaptive parenting [87]. Of particular interest for the present study were the subscales assessing maternal maladaptive parenting which consisted of 3 subscales: physical punishment (5 items; e.g., “I use physical punishment as a way of disciplining our child”), verbal hostility (3 items; e.g., “Yells or shouts when child misbehaves”), non-reasoning (3 items; e.g., “Punishes by taking privileges away from child with little if any explanations”). In the current study, this measure demonstrated high internal reliability (e.g., Cronbach’s alpha values were 0.90).

Problematic media use

Mothers completed the Chinese version of the Problematic Media Use Measure scale (PMUM) developed by Domoff et al. [18]. This measure has demonstrated evidence of reliability and validity among parents of Chinese children [88]. The Chinese version of PMUM consists of 23 items and two subscales: psychosocial problems (11 items; e.g., “My child’s screen media use interferes with family activities”) and tolerance & withdrawal (12 items; e.g., “It is hard for my child to stop using screen media”). Each item was rated on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = “never” to 5 = “always”). Higher scores indicate a higher level of PMU. In this study, Cronbach’s α for tolerance and preoccupation and psychosocial functioning were 0.94 and 0.96.

Statistical analyses

First, we adopted the Harman single-factor method to examine the common method bias due to the questionnaire’s self-report. According to the test results, there were 16 factors with characteristic roots of more than 1 in principal component analysis, and the variation explained by the first factor was 22.94%, which was lower than the critical value of 40%, demonstrating that there was no serious common method bias in this study. Second, Pearson correlation analyses were conducted to investigate the associations among all the study variables and to investigate multicollinearity. The high correlation between independent variables leads to the occurrence of multicollinearity. Third, to ensure the reliability of the model, a multicollinearity test was conducted. The multicollinearity test is used to determine whether and to what extent the independent variables under observation are correlated. The occurrence of a high degree of correlation is certainly a significant methodological problem, because independent variables thus lose their presumption of independence as one of the most important preconditions for their use. Fourth, mediation analysis was constructed to examine the hypothesized mediation models based on variables’ correlations, a regression-based approach. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS Statistics version 26.0 and macro-program PROCESS 3.3.

Results

Preliminary analyses

Means, standard deviations, and correlations among variables are presented in Table 2. Among the results, maternal COVID-19 distress was significantly and positively associated with maternal parenting stress (p < .001) and maladaptive parenting (p < .001). Then, parenting stress was significantly and positively associated with maladaptive parenting (p < .001). At last, children’s PMU was significantly positively correlated with maternal COVID-19 distress (p < .001), maternal parenting stress (p < .001), and maladaptive parenting (p < .001).

Table 2 Descriptive statistics and correlations for study variables
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Mediation analyses

The multicollinearity test indicated that the VIF (variance inflation factor) values of all independent variables were less than 3, indicating that there is no multicollinearity problem in the model. This meant that there was no highly correlated linear relationship between the variables, thus ensuring the stability of the model. Mediation analyses aimed to examine relations among maternal COVID-19 distress, maternal parenting stress, maladaptive parenting, and children’s PMU. Table 3; Fig. 2 show the results of the hypothesis testing. Confirming Hypothesis (1), the study found maternal COVID-19 distress was positively related to children’s PMU without any mediators. As shown in Table 4, the total effect of maternal COVID-19 distress on children’s PMU (total effect = 0.28, 95% CI = [0.24, 0.32]) was positive and significant.

Table 3 Direct and indirect effect maternal distress on children’ s problematic media use
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Fig. 2
figure 2

Results of serial mediational model. Note **p < .01; ***p < .001

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Table 4 Mediating effects of parenting stress and maladaptive parenting on the relationship between maternal distress and children’s problematic media use
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Confirming Hypothesis (2), Table 3 (Model 1 and Model 3) showed that maternal COVID-19 distress was positively related to parenting stress, and parenting stress was positively related to children’s PMU. The study found maternal parenting stress mediated the relationship between maternal COVID-19 distress and children’s PMU (maternal COVID-19 distress → parenting stress → children’s PMU: effect = 0.10, SE = 0.01, 95% CI = [0.08, 0.13]) (see Table 4). In addition, Table 3 (Model 2 and Model 3) indicated maternal COVID-19 distress was positively correlated with maladaptive parenting, and maladaptive parenting was positively correlated with children’s PMU. It indicated that maladaptive parenting also mediated the relationship between maternal COVID-19 distress and children’s PMU (maternal COVID-19 distress → maladaptive parenting → children’s PMU: effect = 0.02, SE = 0.01, 95% CI = [0.01, 0.04]), also confirming Hypothesis (3), as seen from the results in Table 4. Finally, confirming Hypothesis (4), the study found maternal parenting stress and maladaptive parenting serial mediated the relationship between maternal COVID-19 distress and children’s PMU. Table 3 (Model 2) showed that parenting stress was positively associated with maladaptive parenting. The relationship was significant (maternal COVID-19 distress → parenting stress → maladaptive parenting → children’s PMU: effect = 0.07, SE = 0.01, 95% CI = [0.06, 0.09]), as shown in Table 4. To summarize, the study revealed a positive relationship between maternal COVID-19 distress and children’s PMU. This association was partially mediated by maternal parenting stress and parenting practices.

Discussion

In the current study, we tested a conceptual model that explored mediating (i.e., parenting stress and maladaptive parenting) factors in the link between maternal distress and children’s PMU in Mainland China during COVID-19. Our results indicated maternal distress was positively associated with children’s PMU during COVID-19 lockdowns. Moreover, maternal distress was not only directly associated with children’s PMU but also indirectly related to children’s PMU via maternal parenting stress and maladaptive parenting.

Maternal distress and children’s problematic media use

The degree to which parents can effectively limit their young child’s screen time may depend on parents’ mental health [89]. The current study found maternal COVID-19 distress was positively associated with children’s PMU. The findings are consistent with previous Chinese studies conducted before COVID-19 [38, 90], namely that the worse maternal mental health, the more children’s screen time reported. Mothers, who are often the primary caregivers [91], may experience increased distress during the lockdowns [92], making it difficult to manage children’s screen time. Tang et al., [93] found that mothers’ general stress was inversely associated with both monitoring and limiting children’s screen time. In addition, children during the pandemic-related quarantine were more likely to have problem behaviors [94, 95], increasing the child’s demands on the parent, which in turn exacerbates parental distress. When parents find it difficult to cope, they tend to use screen media as a “babysitter” to reduce child problem behavior and parent-child conflict [96]. According to Nabi and Krcmar [97], letting children use media can help parents reduce their own stress. This may unintentionally lead children to use media as a self-regulation strategy [7], which is not conducive to the development of children’s self-regulation abilities. Individuals with lower self-regulation capabilities may exhibit heightened sensitivity to external stimuli, such as media content, and encounter challenges in exerting control over and managing their media use [98, 99].

The mediating role of parenting stress

Our findings showed that parenting stress independently mediated the relationship between maternal COVID-19 distress and children’s PMU. This finding lends support to the stress process model, which predicts that stressor accumulation causes maternal psychological distress and parenting stress [50, 100]. Furthermore, the findings are consistent with previous research showing that when parents have poor mental health, they report more parenting stress [51, 101], which also supports the spillover hypothesis theory. For example, Babore et al. [29] found that parenting stress plays an important mediating role between maternal distress and children’s problem behaviors. Parents in a poor psychological state experience increased parenting stress, indicating that general psychological distress can generate or worsen parenting stress. However, mothers who experience higher levels of parenting stress are more likely to require resources to help them reduce the demands of parenting [102]. During the lockdown, electronic media was the most convenient and available resource. Occupying their children with using media can provide parents with time to cope with parenting stress, potentially lowering the demands of parenting [102]. Furthermore, according to IT-CPU, mothers with higher parenting stress are more likely to use media to withdraw from tense family interactions and get a short rest [7]. In conclusion, the results show that the mothers perceived COVID-19 distress related to stress events exacerbated parenting stress, increasing the risk of children’s PMU. It is critical for parents to manage and cope with the major stressors, as well as regulate their mental health and relieve parenting stress, which reduces children’s PMU.

The mediating role of maladaptive parenting

The findings of this study indicated that maladaptive parenting independently mediated the relationship between maternal COVID-19 distress and children’s PMU. As previously stated, the COVID-19 pandemic presented unexpected challenges for parents [103]; given that mothers in China may be more responsible for family care than fathers, these challenges have significantly increased maternal distress [104]. Parents with high levels of psychological distress are inclined to use punitive and harsher parenting practices with their children [105, 106], consistent with the general strain theory and positively predicts children’s PMU. This finding lends support to previous studies on adolescents [10, 69], indicating that maladaptive parenting practices are associated with excessive media use. When parents engage in maladaptive parenting practices and do not care about or spend time with their children, their children are more likely to seek emotional and psychological comfort through excessive use of media. Furthermore, maladaptive parenting will obstruct children’s psychological development [107, 108], eventually leading to PMU.

The serial mediating roles of parenting stress and parenting practices

In this study, maternal parenting stress and parenting practices were found to sequentially mediate this relationship. Specifically, maternal COVID-19 distress was linked to maladaptive parenting via maternal parenting stress, exacerbating the child’s PMU. Our findings supported the parental stress model [70], demonstrating the impacts of environmental stresses on maladaptive parenting through parenting stress. Notably, higher levels of cumulative risk were associated with higher levels of psychological distress [32]. Maternal higher COVID-19 distress and mental health problems as a major family member will lead to higher parenting stress [109] and will transfer their negative emotional experience to maladaptive parenting [75], which may show less acceptance and encouragement of children. Instead, it is easier to engage in maladaptive parenting practices such as harsh and punitive measures [105, 106], exacerbating the children’s PMU.

Limitations and future directions

The current study’s findings add to our understanding of the negative impact of stressful events (the COVID-19 pandemic) on Chinese parents and will serve as a reference for family-based practices in the event of possible pandemics in the future. It appears to be the first study to demonstrate that the links between COVID-19 distress and PMU in Chinese preschoolers are caused by parenting stress and parenting practices. Despite the fact that the results add to the existing literature, there are several limitations to consider when interpreting the findings.

First, the current study’s correlational design limits our ability to investigate causal links and the direction of effects between variables. It is suggested that future research use a longitudinal design to investigate those mediation effects and track the directional or transactional processes over time. Furthermore, all of the instruments used in this study were self-reported, which could lead to judgmental biases and shared method variances. Future research should collect data from multiple sources to obtain convergent evidence with alternative-source ratings of parenting practices (e.g., observations). Second, the data was obtained solely during COVID-19, and no data on any of the measures existed before the pandemic. Thus, it is difficult to determine whether the findings are unique to the COVID-19 context and whether there was an upsurge in PMU and use following the pandemic’s onset. Hence, cautious thought must be applied when applying the results to media use during routine times. In addition, the study does not consider the variation in the impact of COVID-19 by residence area, indicating a sampling bias. The impact of economic status on parents’ mental health and parenting styles [110] has not yet been considered. When exploring the impact of future public health emergencies in the future, it is necessary to consider regional distribution and changes in economic status. Third, two items were used to assess maternal COVID-19 distress, which is relatively simple but not sufficiently accurate. Concomitantly, we only looked at maternal distress and general parenting practices. Future research should consider the beliefs of other family members as well as specific parenting practices in certain areas (e.g., digital parenting). For example, Cao et al. [111] found that Chinese parents should need more guidance and support for digital parenting. Fourth, the study only explored parent-driven effects, namely the influence of mothers on children’s media use. In the future, child-driven effects should be considered and the impact of children’s media use on parent-child interaction should be explored. Due to the young age of preschool children, it is difficult for them to actively access electronic media at home. Children’s ability to use electronic devices may be related to their parents’ beliefs about the effects of media/screen time [112]. Future research should focus on parents’ positive and negative beliefs about media use, as well as the relationship between belief and children’s media use. Finally, not considering interactions limits our ability to fully understand the complex relationships between different variables, which may affect the interpretation and inference of the phenomena studied. Future research should examine the interactions between these related variables to gain a more comprehensive understanding.

Conclusion

The current study looks into the role of parenting stress and general parenting practices in mediating the relationship between maternal COVID-19 distress and children’s problematic media use. During lockdowns, parents may struggle to balance their personal lives, careers, and parenting responsibilities, making it difficult to maintain good mental health and limit their children’s media use. When facing stressful events, parents should address their emotions and stress as soon as possible and improve their mindfulness through learning and training. Moreover, parents should establish screen-time rules and not compromise on these rules. It is best for parents to support their children by using adaptive parenting techniques such as effective communication and interaction and diverting their attention away from unrestricted and excessive media use.

Data availability

All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article.

Abbreviations

PMU:

Problematic Media Use

IT-CPU:

Interactional Theory of Childhood Problematic Media Use

CEFIS:

COVID-19 Exposure and Family Impact Survey

PSI-SF:

Parenting Stress Index-Short Form

PSDQ:

Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire

PMUM:

Problematic Media Use Measure scale

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Funding

This work is sponsored by STI 2030-Major Projects (Nos. 2022ZD0209000, 2022ZD0209001, 2022ZD0209002, 2022ZD0209003, 2022ZD0209004, 2022ZD0209005, and 2021ZD0200516).

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  1. Shanghai Institute of Early Childhood Education, Shanghai Normal University, 100 Guilin Road, Xuhui District, Shanghai, China

    Jingyao Wang, Shumin Wang, Juan Li, Yuemin Feng & Yan Li

  2. Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada

    Bowen Xiao

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The execution of this paper was a collaborative effort on behalf of all authors. YL and JYW conceptualized and designed the study. The data collection and analysis were conducted by JYW, SMW, JL, and YMF. JYW, SMW, and YMF drafted the initial manuscript before JL, BWX, and YL contributed to the writing of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Wang, J., Wang, S., Xiao, B. et al. Maternal distress, parenting stress, maladaptive parenting and children’s problematic media use in China: evidence from 2022 spring in Shanghai. BMC Public Health 24, 1857 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-024-19382-0

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