Parents’ psychological factors promoting children’s mental health and emotional regulation during the COVID-19 lockdown

On March 9th, 2020 Italy went into lockdown due to the spread of COVID-19 pandemic. Several studies showed how the pandemic had a negative impact on children’s psychological well-being. The present research studied how parents can promote their children’s psychological well-being, in order to understand how to help parents in managing this unprecedented situation. A total of 277 parents of children aged 6 to 13 years old completed an online survey. MANCOVA analyses showed that children with more anxiety and depression, more lability/negativity and less emotional regulation had parents with more psychological distress, less regulatory emotional self-efficacy, and less parenting self-efficacy (all p < .01). Parents were important protective factor for their children’s mental health during the lockdown.