Family Satisfaction, Relationship Satisfaction, and Beliefs about Resilience: Understanding Parent Stress in the COVID19 Pandemic Using the Double ABCX Model

Evidence that COVID19-related stressors have adversely impacted the mental health of both parents and their children is growing, yet the potential family mechanisms through which these stressors impact mental health outcomes remain largely untested. This study examined a moderated mediation model predicting parent stress from the pile-up of pandemic-related stressors informed by the Double ABCX theoretical model of family stress and adaptation. Participants included a subset (n = 1386) of the U.S. sample (N = 2026) of the Covid Family Life Study. Results revealed that family satisfaction mediated the association between stressor pile-up and stress for parents with low family resilience beliefs (effect = .0407, CI = .0110, .0817), but there was no evidence that family satisfaction mediated the association between stressor pile-up and perceived stress for parents with moderate (effect = .0119, CI = -.0088, .0376) or high (effect = -.0170, CI = -.0524, .0149) family resilience beliefs. Relationship satisfaction mediated the association between stressor pile-up and stress across all levels of family resilience beliefs. The direct associations of family satisfaction and relationship satisfaction to parent stress were both moderated by family resilience beliefs. Whereas resilience beliefs buffered parents from stress in the context of reduced relationship satisfaction, we observed a positive association between family satisfaction and stress for parents with high levels of family resilience beliefs. Implications of these results for interventions aiming to foster parental well-being in disaster contexts are discussed.