Graduation Year

2022

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree

Ph.D.

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Degree Granting Department

Child and Family Studies

Major Professor

Svetlana Yampolskaya, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Linda M. Callejas, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Norin Dollard, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Jennifer Marshall, Ph.D.

Keywords

Coping Strategies, COVID-19 Pandemic, Foster Parents, Natural Disasters, Parents

Abstract

On March 11, 2022, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the Sars CoV-2 a global pandemic. The virus that originated in Wuhan, China, had spread to several other countries causing governments to shut down and issue safety mandates to slow and stop the spread. The pandemic caused global changes to normal routines and highlighted the importance of coping during these tough times. Although the global COVID-19 pandemic encompassed much of the news during the past few years, it is not an isolated catastrophic event to have impacted society. Natural disasters, such as hurricanes and wildfires, wars, and other disasters have occurred throughout the course of humanity. Due to the magnitude of impact of such large-scale events, it is vital to continue research in order to understand the effects on individuals, families, and communities. Although coping behaviors and skills is a highly researched topic, there is a gap in the area of parental coping during catastrophic events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, this dissertation has three aims:

1) examine the current literature on parental coping skills during catastrophic events, 2) examine coping behaviors parents utilized during the COVID-19 pandemic and identify subgroups of parents with similar coping behaviors, and 3) explore the needs and the coping strategies of foster parents during the COVID-19 pandemic.

To address the purpose of the dissertation, the dissertation will utilize a multi-method study design: an integrative review, a quantitative study, and a qualitative study. The dissertation studies add to the knowledge of coping research by exploring parental coping in depth.

This dissertation begins with an integrative review of the literature on parental coping during past catastrophic events such as natural disasters, times of war or threats of security stress, and economic crises. This review found that during catastrophic events there can be a multitude of stressors that negatively impact parents and families simultaneously. Due to these stressors, parents utilized multiple types of coping skills: individual, group or communal, and social supports. These skills helped parents to manage both the basic needs of the families, and the psychological distress.

Following the review, is an exploratory study to examine coping strategies utilized parents during the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, this study conducted a Latent Class Analysis (LCA), to identify if there were subcategories of parental coping styles. From the sample of the study, three classes were identified: Overall Low Coping, Approach Coping, and Avoidant Coping. Findings from this study discussed how culture, gender, and level of stress may influencing the type of coping strategy parents may choose to employ. It was also noted that categorizing coping strategies is a difficult task as these skills do not often fall into mutually exclusive category and that a strategy may be effective during one event, but not during another.

The last manuscript of this dissertation is a qualitative study in which foster parents were interviewed to discuss their experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although foster parents encountered many of the same stressors as other parents, they also had to cope with changes that occurred within the foster care system during the pandemic. Oftentimes, children and adolescents in foster care deal with trust issues due to the circumstances surrounding their removal from their home and foster parents are tasked to support the physical and behavioral health needs of these youth. Foster parent recruitment and retention are issues that continuously need to be addressed, therefore understanding how foster parents cope and take care of themselves are important topics of research. The themes found in this study were: foster parent stressors, foster parent coping, and systemic issues. Findings from this study can inform fostering agencies and clinical practitioners who work with this population.

Overall, this dissertation addresses a gap in coping literature. Parental coping strategies can influence parental behaviors and attitudes. The coping skills described throughout the dissertation can offer a useful set of tools for parents and communities to better manage their response in future catastrophic events.

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