Predictors of harsh parenting practices and inter-partner conflict during the COVID-19 pandemic in Ontario, Canada: a cross-sectional analysis from the Ontario Parent Survey

Abstract

Objectives

Guided by the bioecological model, the purpose of this study was to examine the associations of (1) individual level factors (sociodemographic, health behaviour and mental health), (2) family (micro) level COVID-19 experiences (difficulty with household management, managing child mood and behaviour, and pandemic-related positive experiences) and (3) community (macro) level factors (residential instability, ethnic concentration, material deprivation and dependency, an indicator of age and labour force) with harsh parenting practices and inter-partner conflict during the early lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic in Ontario, Canada.

Design

A cross-sectional analysis of data from the Ontario Parent Survey.

Setting

A convenience sample of 7451 caregivers living in Ontario, Canada, at the time of baseline data collection (May–June 2020).

Participants

Caregivers aged 18 years and older with children 17 years or younger.

Outcome measures

Parenting practices over the past 2 months was assessed using a published modification of the Parenting Scale. The frequency of inter-partner conflict over the past month was assessed using the Marital Conflict scale.

Results

Individual (sociodemographic factors, alcohol use, and higher depressive and anxiety symptoms) and family (difficulties with managing the household and child mood and behaviour) level factors were positively associated with inter-partner conflict and harsh parenting practices. Having fewer positive experiences (eg, performing activities with children), and economic adversity at the family level were positively associated with inter-partner conflict but inversely associated with harsh parenting. At the community level, residential instability was negatively associated with harsh parenting practices.

Conclusions

Individual and family level factors were associated with harsh parenting and inter-partner conflict. The associations of fewer positive experiences and economic hardship with harsh parenting practices may be more complex than initially thought. Efforts that raise awareness and address caregiver mental health concerns are needed as part of the pandemic response to promote positive inter-partner and parent-child interactions.

STRENGTHS AND LIMITATIONS OF THIS STUDY.

• This study included a broad range of individual, family and community level factors, which enabled us to use the bioecological model to understand the impact of the pandemic on harsh parenting practices and inter-partner conflict during the pandemic.

• This study included a large sample of participants, used validated assessment tools for data collection and collected data within few months of the pandemic.

• The majority of participants were female, which limits the generalisability of the study findings.

• Data on parenting practices and inter-partner conflict were self-reported by participants and may be prone to social desirability bias.

• The analyses were based on cross-sectional data and therefore temporal associations between the exposures and outcomes cannot be established.

Introduction

Over the past 3 years, the COVID-19 pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on the physical and psychosocial health and well-being of individuals globally. During the early stages of the pandemic, extended quarantine and widespread lockdown measures were implemented and enforced to contain the spread of the virus.¹ Although these measures helped to mitigate the spread of the virus, they have had inadvertent negative consequences on the psychosocial health of individuals.^{2 3} In addition to these policy measures, other pandemic-related stressors emerged, including loss of employment and income, childcare and school closures, increase in caregiving responsibilities, and physical distancing from family and friends disrupting lives of many individuals, and especially of families with young children.^4–7

Theoretical models suggest that parent and child health are interconnected, such that stress experienced by parents can cause stress in children, and vice versa.^{5 8} According to the bioecological model, an individual’s development is influenced by factors at five levels, including the microsystem, mesosystems, exosystem, macrosystem and chronosystem. The microsystem refers to an individual’s immediate environment or setting (eg, family, school or workplace), the mesosystem comprises interactions between two settings (eg, an individual’s family and workplace), the exosystem involves external settings which has an indirect influence on the individual (eg, for a child, the interaction between child’s home and parent’s workplace or neighbourhood), the macrosystem involves broader cultural factors (eg, cultural values, beliefs, laws and policies) and chronosystem refers to sociohistorical factors or change in individual and environmental factors over time that impact human development (eg, the COVID-19 pandemic and the public health decisions made by the government such as school closures and physical distancing).⁸ Thus, child and family well-being is influenced by the sociodemographic and health characteristics of the individual, the household environment, work, school and community settings, which in turn are influenced by the cultural values, neighbourhood factors, and the broader social, political and economic systems.⁸ Presence of financial challenges, engagement in poor health behaviours, caregiver and child mental health problems, and living in socially and/or economically deprived neighbourhoods predispose individuals to negative family function.^9–12

In the recent pandemic, social disruptions caused by COVID-19 has further inflicted stress on parents and caregivers, which can disrupt parent-child and inter-partner relationships.⁵ Studies examining the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and policy measures on family functioning have demonstrated an association between work-family imbalance and greater levels of parenting stress, relationship distress, partner conflict, alongside higher individual levels of anxiety and depressive symptoms. COVID-19-related psychological stressors such as fear of acquiring the infection, and related exposure to environmental stressors such as job and financial loss, housing dissatisfaction, food insecurity, COVID-19 illness, hospitalisation or death have been associated with worse child and parent mental health outcomes, couple verbal conflict, parenting irritability, and lower levels of positive family expressiveness.^{7 13} The negative consequences of the pandemic on family relationships are likely to persist, especially in the absence of effective interventions.

However, few studies have examined the triad of individual, family and community level factors collectively on inter-partner relationship and harsh parenting practices.^{13 14} A study conducted among Canadian adults aged 18 years and older found that caregiver depression, relationship distress, having greater number of children in the household, and unmet childcare needs were associated with lower-quality parenting.¹³ Further, a study conducted in older adolescents and younger adults from Manitoba, Canada in November to December 2020 found a 24% increase in intimate partner conflict.¹⁴ Younger adults compared with older adolescents, and females compared with males were less likely of being uncertain of changes in intimate partner conflict.¹⁴ However, these studies did not examine a more comprehensive range of COVID-19 experiences including factors related to management of household responsibilities, child mood and behaviour, engagement in positive activities, and neighbourhood or community level factors. Further, many of the studies that have examined these associations are based on smaller sample sizes limiting statistical power. Examining a broad range of individual level sociodemographic, behavioural and mental health risk factors, COVID-19 experiences, and community level factors using a large sample will assist in developing and implementing targeted prevention and intervention efforts necessary to mitigate the negative impact of the pandemic on families. Thus, guided by the bioecological model, the purpose of this study was to examine the association of: (1) individual level sociodemographic, health behaviour and mental health factors, (2) family (micro) level COVID-19 experiences including difficulty with managing household responsibilities and child mood and behaviour, pandemic-related positive experiences, and financial impact and (3) community (macro) level factors including residential instability, ethnic concentration, material deprivation and dependency, with harsh parenting practices and inter-partner conflict during the early lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic in Ontario, Canada.

Methods

Study design and participants

The Ontario Parent Survey was designed to examine experiences of Ontario families through the initial phase of the lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants were recruited through online crowdsourcing techniques including advertisements on social media and email announcements sent to provincial public health units, Ontario EarlyON Centres, school boards, and municipal, community, and professional organisations across Ontario (eg, Ontario Nurses Association). A total of 7451 caregivers (age range 18–73 years) residing in Ontario, Canada with children 17 years or younger completed the online questionnaire in English or French. If a participant had more than one child, they were asked to complete the questionnaire for the child with the next birthday relative to the time they were completing the survey. Data were collected between 5 May and 19 June 2020. This timeframe overlapped with Ontario’s first provincial stay-at-home order (17 March–12 August 2020). Participants who completed the survey were entered into a raffle for one of five $50 gift cards for Amazon or local grocery stores or one of five Apple iPads.

Study measures

Inter-partner conflict

Frequency of inter-partner conflict over the past month was assessed using the 12-item Marital Conflict scale.¹⁵ Six items assessed the feelings and actions of the participant (eg, ‘I was angry at my partner’, ‘I yelled at or criticised my partner’), and the same six items assessed their partner’s feelings and actions toward them (eg, ‘My partner was angry at me’, ‘My partner yelled at or criticised me’). Each item was scored from 0 (not at all) to 3 (a lot). Subscores were averaged across the two categories to create a total inter-partner conflict score. The total score may range from 0 to 18, with a higher score indicating greater inter-partner conflict. The internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha) of the scale in our sample was 0.84 (95% CI 0.84, 0.85).

Parenting practices

Parenting practices were assessed using a published modification of the Parenting Scale.^16–18 This 10-item scale assessed harsh parenting behaviours in discipline situations over the past 2 months (eg, ‘When my child misbehaves … I raise my voice or yell’, ‘When my child misbehaves … I spank, slap, grab or hit my child’). Each item was scored from 1 to 8. A total score was calculated as the average across all items, with higher scores indicating harsher parenting practices. This scale had good internal consistency with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.83 (95% CI 0.83, 0.84) in our study.

COVID-19 experiences

The COVID-19 experiences were assessed using questions developed by the investigators and were based on the methodology and empirical findings from studies of natural disasters and previous studies of the pandemic.^19–21 These items investigated the pandemic’s impact on health, financial security, access to basic needs, management of household responsibilities (maintaining household routines, organisation and meals, balancing work and looking after child(ren), and managing child(ren)’s remote learning and screen time), child mood and behaviour, and engagement in positive activities (eg, increased time to do activities with children and increase in physical activity) during the past month. In analyses, positive activities were reverse coded so that greater values indicated participation in fewer positive activities. Factor analysis was applied to the items assessing COVID-19 experiences (see statistical analysis). Financial impact of COVID-19 on the household (eg, ability to meet financial obligations or essential needs, such as rent or mortgage payments, utilities and groceries) was reported on an ordinal scale with values ranging from 0 (no impact) to 3 (major impact). The internal consistency for all items used in the factor analysis was 0.86 (95% CI 0.86, 0.86) and for the three factors including household management, child mood and behaviour, and positive experiences was 0.83 (95% CI 0.83, 0.84), 0.84 (95% CI 0.83, 0.84) and 0.71 (95% CI 0.71, 0.73), respectively.

Caregiver mental health

Depressive symptoms within the past week were measured using the 10-item, self-reported Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D).²² Each item was assessed on a 4-point scale ranging from 0 (<1 day) to 3 (5–7 days). After reverse coding the positive affect items, a total score was calculated as the sum of all items and may range from 0 to 30. Participants with a score of 10 or higher were identified as having high depressive symptoms.²² Anxiety symptoms within the past 2 weeks were measured using the 7-item General Anxiety Disorder scale (GAD-7).²³ Each item is scored on a 4-point scale ranging from 0 (not at all) to 3 (nearly every day). A total score was calculated as the sum of all items and may range from 0 to 21. Scores of 0–4, 5–9, 10–14 and 15 or higher indicate minimal, mild, moderate and severe anxiety, respectively. The psychometric properties of the CES-D and the GAD-7 have been described previously.^23–27 In the current study, the CES-D and GAD-7 had high internal consistency scores of 0.87 (95% CI 0.87, 0.87) and 0.91 (95% CI 0.91, 0.91), respectively.

Substance use

Participants were asked to report whether or not they had consumed alcohol and cannabis during the past 6-month period. Responses for both health behaviours were grouped as ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

Sociodemographic variables

Sociodemographic variables included gender (male, female (cell size for other gender was small and therefore this category was excluded from the analysis)), ethnicity (white or European, visible minority), education (ordinal variable ranging from ‘less than high school diploma’ to ‘university certificate, diploma or degree above bachelor’s degree’), partner status (single, married or common-law, other) and number of children. To evaluate the effect of remote learning on the outcome measures, the number of children were grouped as ‘number of school-aged children (≥5 years)’ and ‘number of non-school-aged children (<5 years)’. The partner status variable was not included in the model examining the association between exposures and inter-partner conflict. However, participants who indicated they were single were included in the analysis as they may have a partner but not be married or in a common-law relationship.

Community-level variables

Based on the Ontario Marginalization Index, the first three digits of participants’ postal code were used to assess four dimensions of marginalisation: residential instability, ethnic concentration, material deprivation and dependency. Higher scores on each dimension indicate greater marginalisation.²⁸ The indicators for assessing residential instability included items such as type of dwelling and ownership, proportion of the population living alone, who are not youth and are not married or living in a common-law relationship.²⁸ Material deprivation was based on income, education, unemployment, housing quality and family structure.²⁸ Dependency was based on the proportion of the population that does not have income from employment.²⁸ The indicators for ethnic concentration included the proportion of the population who were recent immigrants and who self-identified as a visible minority.²⁸

Statistical analysis

Missing data (19.3% of all items) were imputed at the item level using Multiple Imputation by Chained Equations, with the assumption these data were missing at random.^{29 30} Descriptive characteristics of study participants were summarised using mean and SD for continuous variables and frequency and percentage for categorical variables.

We examined the underlying structure and interrelationships of items investigating COVID-19 experiences with exploratory factor analysis (principal component fitting, varimax rotation). Low-frequency items were removed from the analysis. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) test, a measure of the proportion of common variance among variables, was used to determine if the remaining data were suited for factor analysis. All items returned KMO values greater than 0.6, indicating factor analysis was appropriate. We examined eigenvalues to identify potential factor solutions (eigenvalues >1) between one and five factors. Only factors that included more than three items with significant loadings (≥0.40) and without cross-loadings were kept. Ultimately, three factors were specified in the analysis. We identified a three-factor solution with factors: ‘difficulty with household management’ (five items related to managing work, household and childcare responsibilities; loadings ranged from 0.57 to 0.85), ‘difficulty with managing child mood and behaviour’ (six items related to child’s mood, behaviour and altercations with the child; loadings ranged from 0.54 to 0.82) and ‘positive experiences’ (seven items related to increased time doing enjoyable activities and time spent with family and friends; loadings ranged from 0.48 to 0.67). Multiple group confirmatory factor analysis revealed that factor structure and loadings were consistent between respondents with school-aged children and with younger children. Factor scores were calculated from the factor structure with the Bartlett approach, which produces unbiased estimates of the true factor scores.^{31 32}

Due to the clustered nature of the data, our initial modelling approach used a generalised linear mixed model to account for the random effects of each cluster. Clusters were built around respondent’s postal code with random effects calculated for each of the community variables. Intraclass correlation coefficient, a measure of the total variance of the outcome variable accounted for by the clustering, was less than 1% for all clusters, indicating that cases within the same cluster were no more similar to one another than cases from different clusters. Therefore, multivariable ordinary least squares linear regression models were used to examine predictors of harsh parenting and inter-partner conflict. All continuous variables, including dependent variables, were standardised (z-score) prior to the regression. Respondents with any z-score value of 3 or higher were excluded (n=71). There was no evidence of multicollinearity between the predictors. We began with ‘full models’ that included all demographic, COVID-19 experiences, community and risk factor variables. Each model was optimised via backward stepwise selection of variables, such that after each model iteration, the least significant variable determined by highest p value, was removed and consecutive models were compared by analysis of variance. If the removed variable had no meaningful impact on the model fit, it was excluded from subsequent iterations. If the removed variable was impactful it was included, and the next least significant variable was removed. When no remaining variables with p values greater than 0.05 remained, the models were finalised. A priori identified demographic variables including age, gender, ethnicity, partner status (for harsh parenting model) and education were retained in all models, regardless of their statistical significance. To reduce the risk of overfitting, model performance was evaluated using 10-fold cross-validation. Survey data were randomly separated into train (90%) and test (10%) datasets and results are reported as the average across all 10 models. All analyses were conducted with a significance level of 0.05 for a two-tailed test and using Spyder V.4.1.5 in Python.³³

Patient and public involvement

Patients or the public were not involved in the design, or conduct, or reporting, or dissemination plans of our research.

Results

The characteristics of study participants are described in table 1. Most of the respondents were female (93.7%), married or in a common-law relationship (86.5%), white/European (88.2%) and had bachelor’s or higher education (51.8%). Alcohol and cannabis use was prevalent in 79.0% and 29.8% of participants, respectively. A substantial proportion of participants (61.5%) reported high depressive symptoms and almost a quarter of participants (23.6%) reported moderate to severe levels of anxiety symptoms. For the community-level factors, the dissemination areas associated with enrolled participants have a mean residential instability quintile of 3.0 (SD=0.8), material deprivation of 3.0 (SD=0.8), dependency of 3.2 (SD=0.8), ethnic concentration of 2.3 (SD=0.9) and population concentration of 1.7 (SD=0.8). The mean parenting behaviour score was 3.0 (SD=1.0) and the mean inter-partner conflict score was 6.3 (SD=2.8).

Table 1.

Descriptive characteristics of participants in the Ontario Parent Survey (n=7451)

	Mean or n	(SD or %)
Age, mean (SD)	38.7	(6.9)
Female, n (%)	6980	(93.7)
Ethnicity, n (%)
White or European	6573	(88.2)
Other	878	(11.8)
Partner status, n (%)
Married or common-law	6444	(86.5)
Single	449	(6.0)
Other	558	(7.5)
Highest education, n (%)
Some high school	85	(1.1)
High school diploma or equivalent	645	(8.7)
Trade certificate or diploma	247	(3.3)
College, CEGEP or other non-university certificate	2283	(30.6)
Below bachelor’s degree	329	(4.4)
Bachelor’s degree	2178	(29.2)
Above bachelor’s degree	1684	(22.6)
Employment status, n (%)
Full-time	4764	(63.9)
Part-time	987	(13.2)
Parental leave	574	(7.7)
Stay-at-home parent/caregiver	694	(9.3)
Registered student	97	(1.3)
Unemployed, looking for work	102	(1.4)
Unable to work due to illness or disability	154	(2.1)
Casual work	88	(1.2)
Alcohol use, n (%)	5883	(79.0)
Cannabis use, n (%)	2222	(29.8)
Number of non-school-aged children <5 years, mean (SD)	0.8	(0.9)
Number of school-aged children ≥5 years, mean (SD)	1.2	(1.1)
Number of depressive symptoms, mean (SD)	11.2	(5.7)
Number of anxiety symptoms, mean (SD)	7.2	(4.8)
COVID-19 experiences, mean (SD)
Difficulty with household management	0.0	(1.0)
Difficulty with managing child mood and behaviour	0.0	(1.0)
Positive experiences	0.0	(1.0)
Financial impact, n (%)
No impact	2803	(37.6)
Minor	3452	(46.3)
Major or moderate	1196	(16.1)
Community level factors, mean (SD)
Residential instability	3.01	(0.8)
Material deprivation	3.02	(0.8)
Dependency	3.21	(0.8)
Ethnic concentration	2.30	(0.9)
Population concentration	1.66	(0.8)

COVID-19 experiences

Approximately two-thirds of the participants (62.4%) reported some level of negative financial impact during the pandemic. A moderate proportion of participants experienced direct or indirect effects of the pandemic on their health and access to healthcare, including being ill (14.6%), having someone close to them being ill or diagnosed with COVID-19 (11.6%), knowing someone who had died (7.9%) or been hospitalised (5.7%) for COVID-19 or non-COVID-19 reasons, being unable to access usual healthcare (30.7%) or get usual prescription medications and treatments (9.2%). Almost a quarter of the participants reported spending increased time caregiving for young and/or school-aged children (23.6%) and interacting with adolescents (26.1%), whereas relatively lower but still substantial proportion spent increased time caregiving for older adults (8.3%) or were unable to care for people who required assistance due to health condition or limitation (6.6%). A greater proportion of caregivers also reported concern with managing remote learning (74.1%), managing their child’s (80.4%) or their own (78.3%) screen time, maintaining household routines (75.3%), and balancing work and looking after children (70.7%). Overall, participants reported that they argued with their child(ren) more frequently (25.3%), their child was upset by restrictions (76.1%) or was bored or hard to entertain (77.4%) and was worried they will catch COVID-19 (29.2%). Almost two-thirds of the caregivers expressed being concerned for their child’s anxiety and stress (64.2%) and managing their child’s behaviour (58.1%).

Participants also reported having positive experiences during the pandemic such as spending more time doing enjoyable activities (41.0%), being more appreciative of things usually taken for granted (35.5%), increased contact with family and friends virtually (31.9%), spending more time in nature or being outdoors (38.9%), eating meals with family more often (29.8), increased exercise or physical activity (27.6%), increased time doing activities with their children (25.1%) and more time spent volunteering (9.9%).

Association of individual, family and community level factors with harsh parenting

Table 2 presents results from analysis examining the association of individual, family and community level factors with harsh parenting. The predictors accounted for 23% of the variability in harsh parenting score. Caregiver sociodemographic characteristics including older age, male gender and greater number of children aged ≥5 years were positively associated with harsh parenting. Alcohol use (β=0.18, 95% CI 0.13, 0.23) and a greater number of depressive (β=0.11, 95% CI 0.08, 0.14) and anxiety symptoms (β=0.05, 95% CI 0.02, 0.08) were also significant predictors of harsh parenting. At the family level, COVID-19 experiences including difficulties with managing the household (β=0.19, 95% CI 0.17, 0.21) and child mood and behaviour (β=0.29, 95% CI 0.27, 0.31) were positively associated with harsh parenting. However, moderate to severe financial impact compared with no impact (β=−0.16, 95% CI −0.22, −0.10), engaging in fewer positive activities (β=−0.03, 95% CI −0.05, −0.008) and living in neighbourhoods with greater residential instability (β=−0.04, 95% CI −0.06, −0.02) were inversely associated with harsh parenting.

Table 2.

Association between individual, family and community level factors and harsh parenting (n=7408)

Variable	β	(95% CI)	P value
Age, years	0.05	(0.03, 0.07)	<0.0001
Female vs male	-0.11	(−0.19, -0.03)	0.006
Ethnic minority vs white/European ethnicity	0.05	(−0.01, 0.11)	0.106
Education	0.01	(−0.01, 0.03)	0.342
Partner status
Single vs married or in common-law relationship	0.05	(−0.04, 0.13)	0.274
Other vs married or in common-law relationship	-0.08	(−0.15, −0.00)	0.047
Number of school-aged children ≥5 years	0.08	(0.05, 0.10)	<0.0001
Alcohol use vs no alcohol use	0.18	(0.13, 0.23)	<0.0001
Number of depressive symptoms	0.11	(0.08, 0.14)	<0.0001
Number of anxiety symptoms	0.05	(0.02, 0.08)	0.001
Difficulty with household management	0.19	(0.17, 0.21)	<0.0001
Difficulty with managing child mood and behaviour	0.29	(0.27, 0.31)	<0.0001
Financial impact of COVID-19
Mild vs no impact	-0.02	(−0.06, 0.03)	0.388
Moderate or severe vs no impact	-0.16	(−0.22, -0.10)	<0.0001
Fewer positive experiences	-0.03	(−0.05, -0.008)	0.006
Residential instability	-0.04	(−0.06, -0.02)	<0.0001

Association of individual, family and community level factors with inter-partner conflict

Table 3 presents results from analysis examining the association of individual, family and community level factors with inter-partner conflict. In this model, the predictors accounted for 24% of the variability in inter-partner conflict score. Caregivers who reported difficulties with managing the household (β=0.14, 95% CI 0.12, 0.16) and child mood and behaviour (β=0.10, 95% CI 0.08, 0.12), and experiencing mild financial impact compared with no impact (β=0.05, 95% CI 0.01, 0.10) were positively associated with inter-partner conflict. Inter-partner conflict score was higher for participants who reported using alcohol (β=0.13, 95% CI 0.08, 0.18) and cannabis (β=0.04, 95% CI 0.02, 0.06) or had greater number of depressive (β=0.04, 95% CI 0.04, 0.05) and anxiety symptoms (β=0.02, 95% CI 0.01, 0.02). Individual sociodemographic factors including older age, male gender and having greater number of children <5 years were positively associated, whereas having greater number of children aged ≥5 years was inversely associated with inter-partner conflict. There was no association between community level factors and inter-partner conflict.

Table 3.

Association between individual, family and community level factors and inter-partner conflict (n=7380)

Variable	β	(95% CI)	P value
Age, years	0.03	(0.00, 0.05)	0.027
Female vs male	-0.15	(−0.23, -0.07)	<0.0001
Ethnic minority vs white/European ethnicity	-0.08	(−0.14, -0.02)	0.014
Education	0.04	(0.02, 0.06)	<0.0001
Number of non-school-aged children <5 years	0.05	(0.03, 0.08)	<0.0001
Number of school-aged children ≥5 years	-0.09	(−0.12, -0.07)	<0.0001
Alcohol use vs no alcohol use	0.13	(0.08, 0.18)	<0.0001
Cannabis use vs no cannabis use	0.04	(0.02, 0.06)	<0.0001
Number of depressive symptoms	0.04	(0.04, 0.05)	<0.0001
Number of anxiety symptoms	0.02	(0.01, 0.02)	<0.0001
Difficulty with household management	0.14	(0.12, 0.16)	<0.0001
Difficulty with managing child mood and behaviour	0.10	(0.08, 0.12)	<0.0001
Financial impact of COVID-19
Mild vs no impact	0.05	(0.01, 0.10)	0.015
Moderate or severe vs no impact	0.01	(−0.05, 0.07)	0.762
Fewer positive experiences	0.02	(0.00, 0.04)	0.096

Discussion

The COVID-19 pandemic and related stressors have had deleterious impacts on many families. Our study was conducted with the goal of understanding the broad range of individual, family and community level factors associated with inter-partner conflict and harsh parenting during the initial stages of the pandemic in Ontario. Our results showed that sociodemographic factors, health behaviours, poor caregiver mental health, and difficulties with managing household responsibilities and child mood and behaviour were associated with harsh parenting and greater inter-partner conflict. Exposure to economic challenges and fewer positive experiences was positively associated with inter-partner conflict but inversely associated with harsh parenting. At the community level, residential instability was negatively associated with harsh parenting.

Decades of research has examined the impact of exposure to traumatic events such as natural and man-made disasters, war, terrorism, historical and childhood trauma, violence, and assault on mental health, family functioning, inter-partner conflict, and parenting practices. Studies have shown that parents who have exposure to traumatic events have greater parenting stress and higher risk of developing mental health problems, which increases their likelihood of adopting harsher parenting practices. Under traumatic situations, parents may be highly occupied with their own trauma or may find it challenging to regulate their own emotions, which may contribute to reduced parenting self-efficacy and compromise their ability to attend to their children’s emotional needs, resulting in adoption of less sensitive and more hostile parenting practices.^34–37 Further, a review of studies examining risk of intimate partner violence within the context of disasters reported that socioeconomic vulnerability, cultural factors, maladaptive behaviours such as substance use/abuse, resource constraints, and material or personnel loss (eg, injury, death, property damage) because of the disaster were at a higher risk of experiencing intimate partner violence.³⁸ Our findings suggest that the exposures associated with harsh parenting practices and inter-partner conflict are not unique to the COVID-19 pandemic but rather the pandemic has further exacerbated the pre-existing stressors faced by families. Literature indicates that exposure to prepandemic stressors such as social and economic challenges, mental health problems, and greater levels of negative emotions prior to the pandemic is associated with higher perceived stress and greater risk of experiencing negative outcomes during the pandemic.^39–43

Our findings support the importance of Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model in helping us understand families’ experiences during the pandemic. At the individual and micro level, caregivers’ sociodemographic characteristics, health behaviours and mental health were positively associated with harsh parenting and inter-partner conflict. Sociodemographic factors, substance use/abuse, psychopathology, and family and interpersonal relationships are interconnected. Substance use problems tend to co-occur with psychopathology, and both these factors individually and together are positively correlated with harsh parenting and inter-partner conflict and violence.^44–46 There is consistent evidence associating parental symptoms of anxiety and depression with parenting irritability, harsh, insensitive, and distant parenting behaviours, and strained family relationships.^{7 45 47}

Further, the combination of the factors at the exosystem and macrosystem levels within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic (chronosystem) presents as a significant stressor on a child’s or a caregiver’s microsystem. The macro level factors in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic and related mitigation efforts may have added stress to the microsystem and further contributed to the negative family functioning outcomes.⁴¹ Our results demonstrated that difficulties with balancing household responsibilities and managing child mood and behaviour were associated with greater inter-partner conflict and harsh parenting above and beyond the individual level demographic, health behaviour and mental health factors. Evidence from longitudinal studies have shown associations between challenges with balancing work and family roles, poor parental and child mental health, and harsh parenting and couple conflict, and these associations are likely to be compounded during the pandemic due to financial instability, limits on social gatherings, reduced access to health and social services, school closures, and loss of childcare and social support.^{7 48–50} Parents and caregivers experienced increased burden during the pandemic with supporting their child’s online learning, in addition to achieving and maintaining their own work-family balance and caring for at-risk family members in the absence of childcare and other health and social services. This stress may be higher for families who have greater number of children and are living in crowded households. In accordance with this explanation, our findings showed that having greater number of school-aged children was associated with harsh parenting, whereas having greater number of children aged younger than 5 years was associated with higher inter-partner conflict.

Pandemic-related distress may also lower caregiver’s tolerance for their child’s misbehaviour, and lead to adoption of harsh disciplinary practices and trigger inter-partner conflict.⁵¹ Evidence also indicates that unexpected significant changes in the social environment may cause many caregivers to have feelings of loss of control, which in turn may increase the likelihood of adopting harsh parenting practices.^{11 52} However, it should be recognised that the association between child mood and behaviour and parenting practices may be bi-directional, where harsh parenting may lead to or further exacerbate the child’s mood and behavioural problems. Surprisingly, economic hardship and participating in fewer positive experiences was inversely related to harsh parenting. Though the activities associated with behaviours were considered positive, such as those associated with social support, it is possible that these behaviours were more complex in ways that caused some parenting stress (eg, spending more time with family or caring for children in the difficult context of pandemic restrictions). Although there are numerous negative impacts of economic hardship, there is evidence of heterogeneity in how families respond to economic hardship.⁵³ It may be possible that parents who experienced economic hardship engaged in more permissive parenting style. It may also be the case that individuals who experienced economic hardship and have developed effective coping and resiliency skills may be more likely to engage is positive parenting practices. Personal traits such as positive self-concept, having optimistic outlook, positive affect, and effective social and communication skills have been associated with close parent-child relationships, suggesting that individuals with these traits may be more likely to adapt to economic adversity and engage in positive parenting practices despite of economic hardship.^54–56 However, further research is needed to examine the association between economic hardship and positive parenting and the role of coping mechanisms within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

At the community level, residential instability was the only factor that was statistically significant and was found to be negatively associated with harsh parenting. The underlying indicator variables used to assess residential instability included items such as the proportion of the population living alone and fewer number of individuals per dwelling (on average). Although having a greater proportion of population living alone is an indicator of residential instability, in our study, this may explain the observed inverse association with harsh parenting.²⁸ Future research should also consider including other community-level or individual-level variables not measured in the current study (eg, housing insecurity) to better understand this association.

Strengths and limitations

Strengths of this study include the large sample size, timely administration of the survey, use of validated assessment tools for data collection, inclusion of known risk and protective variables, and availability of a broad range of individual, family and community level factors, which enabled us to use the bioecological model to understand the impact of the pandemic on parenting practices and inter-partner conflict during the pandemic. Nevertheless, there are some limitations that must be acknowledged. This study used a convenience sample of participants with a greater proportion of them being female, and therefore the findings may not be representative of the broader Ontario population. Further, data on parenting behaviours and inter-partner conflict were self-reported by participants and may be prone to social desirability bias. Although data were collected anonymously, it is possible that caregivers may have under-reported engagement in harsh parenting behaviours and partner conflict. Finally, the cross-sectional design of this study makes it challenging to establish temporal associations between the exposures and outcomes. As the pandemic evolves, population-based longitudinal studies with a long follow-up period are needed to further understand these associations and to examine changes in the outcomes with respect to changes in the exposures.

Recommendations and conclusions

Overall, the results shed light on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on parent-child and inter-partner relationships. Although public health restrictions and mandates are lifted and we are recovering from the pandemic, the consequences of the pandemic are likely going to be long-lasting, especially in the absence of interventions. The findings from this study will help inform strategies to mitigate harms as we recover from the recent pandemic and to prepare for future pandemics and population-level crises. Since mental health problems were associated with both, harsh parenting and partner conflict, the results suggest a need for individual mental health supports for caregivers and children. Strategies that assist parents to manage their own stress should be made a priority to prevent the negative consequences of poor parental mental health on children’s well-being. Public education and awareness campaigns on mental health and related supports and services should be implemented to prevent negative psychosocial consequences rather than waiting to intervene after mental health issues have been identified. Parents and caregivers also need to be informed of effective strategies and given easy access to information, supports and resources to assist them with managing their children’s emotions and behaviours. It is also important to encourage individuals to seek social support and develop strategies that strengthen family relationships. Strengthening family relationships will not only help to mitigate the negative effects of stressors (eg, COVID-19 pandemic experiences), but they can also improve caregiver and child mental health.^{57 58} Further, employers may consider offering counselling and mental health services, resources to lower stress and enhance coping mechanisms, financial supports, flexible work arrangements, and leave entitlements to support employees that are balancing work and childcare responsibilities. Surprisingly, our results showed an inverse association between residential instability and harsh parenting. Therefore, we recommend that future research should examine other community-level and individual-level variables not measured in the current study such as housing insecurity, housing characteristics, crowdedness and urban/rural area of residence to better understand this association. Since many disparities will remain even after the pandemic has passed, it will be important to continue implementing and maintaining interventions in the future. Further, longitudinal research is needed to understand the evolving needs of caregivers and children and to develop interventions that support positive inter-partner and parent-child interactions.

Data availability statement

Data are available upon reasonable request. Data are available upon request.

Ethics statements

Patient consent for publication

Not applicable.

Ethics approval

This study was approved by the Hamilton Integrated Research Ethics Board (ID 10583). The participant data were deidentified prior to their release to the study team. Participants gave informed written consent to participate in the study prior to completing the questionnaire.