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The COVID-19 pandemic and associated mitigation efforts created stress that threatened parent and child well-being. Conditions that increase stress within families heighten the likelihood of child abuse, but social support can mitigate the impact. This short-term investigation considered whether cumulative risk, COVID-19 specific risk, and emotional support (one aspect of social support), were associated with child abuse potential during the pandemic. Additionally, we investigated whether emotional support moderated the association between COVID-19 specific risk and child abuse potential, and associations between child abuse potential and emotionally positive and emotionally negative parenting. Participants included 89 parents, from a metropolitan area with a large number of economically distressed families, who completed online questionnaires. COVID-19 specific risk and emotional support each explained additional variance in child abuse potential beyond cumulative risk, but emotional support did not moderate the association between COVID-19 specific risk and child abuse potential. Consistent with expectations, child abuse potential was negatively associated with emotionally positive parenting and positively associated with emotionally negative parenting practices. Results highlight the importance of addressing both risks and supports at multiple levels for parents during times of stress., Competing Interests: Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Remote schooling due to Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) created profound challenges for families. In this investigation, we examined parents' depression and anxiety during remote schooling and their associations with parents' reports of school support. We also evaluated indirect and interactive (i.e., moderation) associations. Participants were parents (N = 152, 92.8% mothers, 65.1% Black) from an urban area with high rates of COVID-19. Of the 152 parents, 27.6% reported elevated levels of depression and 34.2% reported elevated anxiety. Regression analyses showed that school support was negatively associated with parents' depression (β = -.33, p < .01) and anxiety (β = -.21, p < .01). There was an indirect association between school support and parents' mental health via household chaos and daily routines. Reported COVID-19 impact moderated the direct association between school support and parental depression and anxiety. There was a statistically significant association between school support and parents' depression and anxiety when COVID-19 impact was low or moderate, but not when COVID-19 impact was high. These results may suggest that for parents who were not highly impacted by the pandemic, school support buffered the association between stress and parents' mental health problems; parents most impacted by COVID-19 may need additional support. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).