COVID-19 pandemic stress and child adjustment: Examining the moderating role of mothers’ and fathers’ pandemic conversational style.

The COVID-19 pandemic posed unprecedented challenges for families, especially those with young children. While the negative impacts of these challenges on children's adjustment have been well-documented, less work has examined protective factors that may buffer children. We examined the moderating role of parent-child conversations on the relation between pandemic stress and children's internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Drawing from a predominantly middle-class sample of 56 families comprising mothers (M_age = 35.25 years, 77% White/non-Hispanic), fathers (N = 45, M_age = 37.16, 84% White/non-Hispanic), and their child (M_age = 4.59 years, 58.9% male), mothers and fathers separately discussed their child's biggest challenge and most positive pandemic experience. Conversations were coded for frequency of internal states' language and parental level of elaboration. Results indicate that mothers', but not fathers', highly elaborative style when discussing their child's biggest challenge and most positive pandemic experiences mitigated the association between families' COVID-19 pandemic stress and children's externalizing problems. These findings have implications for future parenting and intervention work, and highlight the importance of considering parent gender, conversational style, and conversational valence in understanding the mechanistic role parent-child conversations play in buffering children from pandemic stressors. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).