Description
The COVID-19 pandemic and the accompanying restrictions multiply parents’ roles and responsibilities: They are called to juggle caregiving responsibilities, workplace demands, teaching tasks, household work, mental, and emotional work. Extant research indicates that mothers are shouldering the bulk of these tasks. Drawing on family stress theory and family practice theory, and based on an ongoing qualitative longitudinal study, we ask: Which strategies have mothers developed to reconcile roles and responsibilities during the coronavirus pandemic?The Austrian-wide study includes 74 working mothers of kindergarten and school-aged children, and consists of problem-centred telephone interviews (49 respondents) and diary entries (25 respondents). Data collection started in the first week of lockdown I in March 2020 and has been continued since, including nine completed waves of data collection so far. Data have been analysed using the Grounded Theory coding scheme. We identified seven key strategies. The respondents strongly relied on strategies of self-optimisation and personal responsibility that allowed them to remain independent of others (restructuring daily routines, working during off-hours, reducing work hours, lowering their own needs, using media for childcare). Only two of their strategies involved active contributions of other family members (working in shifts, involving relatives). The elaboration of these strategies demanded careful preparation and organization and was at the expense of the respondents’ individual needs for regeneration. We discuss the consequences of these strategies for mothers and for their families, elaborate on the evolvement of these strategies over time, and outline their relations to policy ascriptions to maternal roles during the pandemic.
| Period | 1 Sept 2021 |
|---|---|
| Event title | 15th ESA Conference 2021 |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | SpainShow on map |