Abstract
In February 2020, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) appeared and spread rapidly in Italy. With the health emergency and social isolation, parents started spending more time with their children, and they might have experienced greater distress. Attachment style is considered as an effective emotion regulation strategy in the parent–child relationship. However, few empirical studies have addressed this issue. Based on attachment theory, this study aimed to find parental attachment style as a candidate to moderate the relation between parents’ negative emotions and their perceptions of their children’s negative emotions related to COVID-19. Parents (Mage = 42.55 ± 6.56, 88.2% female) of 838 Italian children and adolescents aged 3 to 18 years participated in an online survey. Results showed that parents with a fearful attachment style had significantly higher negative emotions when facing COVID-19 than those with other attachment styles. Moreover, parents with a dismissing attachment style perceived fewer negative emotions in their children than parents with fearful and preoccupied styles. At last, higher parents’ negative emotions were associated with greater perception of children’s negative emotions only in parents classified as secure and fearful. These findings suggest that parents with dismissing and fearful attachment styles and their children may be at higher risk during the COVID-19 pandemic and they should be given long-term attention.
Highlights
In February 2020, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) spread rapidly in Italy and forced a comprehensive lockdown on March 10, 2020
The results of the ANOVAs showed that a main effect was found on parents’ negative emotions depending on different attachment styles (F(3,834) = 6.71, p < 0.001, 2 p
Post hoc analyses revealed that parents with a fearful attachment style had significantly higher negative emotions when facing COVID
Summary
In February 2020, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) spread rapidly in Italy and forced a comprehensive lockdown on March 10, 2020. In a recent survey of Chinese adults, it was found that individuals’ perceived severity of COVID-19 increased their negative emotions (Li Y. et al, 2020), with higher levels of stress, anxiety, depression, and other symptoms (Wang H. et al, 2020). A survey with adults aged 16–75 years in the United Kingdom showed that social isolation and loneliness brought on by COVID-19 increased the risk of anxiety, depression, and other negative consequences (Holmes et al, 2020). In a survey of Italian and Spanish parents, they realized that some of their children’s emotions (such as boredom and irritability) and behaviors (such as sleep time) had changed compared with those before isolation (Orgilés et al, 2020)
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