Positivity protects Chinese mothers' and adolescents' well-being and functioning against COVID-19 family economic stress.

Abstract

The family stress model has been used widely to interpret how economic circumstances affect human development. However, its applicability to Chinese families with adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic remains unclear. Although resilience processes have been integrated into this model, they have seldom been examined in the Chinese family context. To address these research gaps, we leveraged data collected before (2018; T1) and during the pandemic (2020; T2) from the nationally representative China family panel studies and tested how the change in family economic status foretells Chinese adolescents' development during the pandemic. The sample consisted of 1,148 adolescents (607 boys and 541 girls; M_age = 11.51 ± 1.13 years old at T1) and their mothers. At T1 and T2, objective and subjective family economic status were assessed. Mothers rated their depression and positivity. At T2, adolescents rated nurturant-involved parenting, family conflicts, and their own positivity, depression, and academic self-regulation. The number of COVID-19 cases in each province was extracted to index regional pandemic risk. Results showed that the associations of the T1-to-T2 changes in family income (mainly in regions with higher pandemic risk) and subjective family economic status with T2 family conflicts and T2 nurturant-involved parenting were linked by the T1-to-T2 change in maternal positivity. In turn, the associations of T2 family conflicts and T2 nurturant-involved parenting with adolescents' depression and academic self-regulation at T2 were linked by T2 adolescent positivity. These findings suggest that nurturing personal positivity is a promising approach to mitigating the negative impacts of family economic stress. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).