Symposia
Culture / Ethnicity / Race
Ashley Bautista, B.S.
University of Houston
Houston, Texas
Sihong Liu, PhD
Postdoctoral Research Associate
University of Oregon
Eugene, Oregon
Amanda Venta, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
University of Houston
Houston, Texas
Philip Fisher, PhD
Professor
Stanford University
Eugene, Oregon
The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated many of the social and health disparities Latinxs have historically faced (Macias Gil et al., 2020). However, current literature examining the impact of COVID-19 fails to address the heterogeneity of Latinxs. The current study focused on generational status, and it was hypothesized that there would be differences in emotional distress and cumulative COVID-19 pandemic-related stressors among different generations of Latinx caregivers of young children. Additionally, it was hypothesized that generational status would moderate the relation between pandemic-related stressors and current caregiver emotional distress. Furthermore, this relation would be strongest in first-generation Latinx caregivers given the possible compounded effect of immigration-related stressors (Garcini et al., 2021). A total of 1009 Latinx caregivers drawn from an ongoing study, the Rapid Assessment of Pandemic Impact on Development-Early Childhood (RAPID-EC), a large national sample of caregivers of children ages 5 and younger. Caregivers had a mean age of 33.13 (6.05) and a majority were female (96%).
One-way ANOVA results showed that generational status differences in cumulative pandemic-related life stressors and current emotional distress were not significant, but were significant in pre-pandemic emotional distress (F(2, 1006) = 8.621, p < .001). Tukey post hoc analysis revealed that the mean difference between third-generation and first-generation Latinx caregivers as well as the difference between third-generation and second-generation Latinx caregivers were statistically significant (p < .05). Moderation results revealed that current emotional distress was predicted by cumulative pandemic-related stressors endorsed (b = 29.989, t(1002) = 3.622, p < .001), but there was no evidence of a main effect of generational status on current emotional distress when evaluating first-generation versus second generation nor first-generation versus third-generation Latinx caregivers.
In this study, generational status does not moderate the relation between current emotional distress and cumulative pandemic-related stressors, but other findings suggest that the better emotional well-being reported by first-generation caregivers pre-pandemic in comparison to third-generation caregivers is threatened by COVID-19 pandemic-related stressors. Future interventions for Latinx families implemented during health-related disasters should target stressors that are amplified by the disaster.