Correlates of youth routine adherence and social support seeking during COVID-19 among Mexican families

Among Mexican families during the early wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, this study tested how parental factors such as parental work-related economic stress, marital satisfaction, anxiety, depression, and resilience were associated with youth routine adherence (e.g., maintaining regular bedtimes, mealtimes, and physical activities) and social support seeking via peer interactions through phone calls, texts, and social media. Parent gender was tested as a moderator of relations. Participants were 2,369 Mexican caregivers (89.2% women, Mage = 34.21) with wide socioeconomic backgrounds, who completed online surveys of family functioning during the early waves of the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings indicated variability in adherence to family routines and social support seeking during COVID-19. Less parental depression and greater parental resilience related to children's routine adherence and both work-related economic stress and lower marital satisfaction were indirectly related to routine adherence via lower depressive symptoms. Less depression, but greater anxiety, was associated with more youth social support seeking in models without marital satisfaction. Again, work-related economic stress was indirectly related to social support seeking via both depression and anxiety. Effects were generally small and parent gender did not moderate any relations. Parents may be gatekeepers for strategies designed to help children cope with stress, and parenting variables—most notably parental depression and broader stressors in the work and marital domains—appear to relate to how youth coped with stress in Mexico during the early waves of the COVID-19 pandemic.