Parents and the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic and the accompanying restrictions are having a significant impact on parents’ lives. Stay-at-home orders, social distancing measures, closures of child care facilities and schools, working from home, and repeated lockdown and reopening phases place heavy demands on parents and multiply their responsibilities (e.g., meeting the family’s economic needs, managing child care and workplace demands, developing new roles as teachers, organizing everyday family lives, adjusting daily routines and family norms, providing for their children’s safety and well-being, dealing with their children’s emotions and anxieties, or managing their own physical and emotional well-being). These added responsibilities may lead to task overload and increased stress.
The qualitative longitudinal study ‘Parents and the COVID-19 Pandemic’ offers in-depth insights into parents’ experiences with the pandemic over time. The study focuses on three main objectives: (1) providing an examination of parents’ experiences and resources during the COVID-19 pandemic; (2) identifying the main practices and strategies parents have developed in dealing with the coronavirus crisis and the accompanying restrictions over time; and (3) investigating parents’ perspectives on the short-, medium-, and long-term consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Austrian-wide study has a sample of 98 parents of kindergarten and school-aged children, and consists of two methodical strands (problem-centred telephone interviews, diary entries). Data collection started in the very first week of the first country-wide lockdown in March 2020 and has been continued since (weekly to bi-weekly contacts between March and June, further data collection waves in summer and autumn 2020, and in spring 2021). Ten waves of data collection have been completed, and at least two further waves are planned, covering a period of two years from the first lockdown until two years thereafter. Data will be analyzed using the Grounded Theory coding scheme.
This study is based on an extraordinarily large and rich qualitative sample and provides an unparalleled opportunity to examine how parents are coping with the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic over time. It will provide a comprehensive sociological analysis of how the pandemic affects parents and their families. This will allow to develop recommendations and support resources, to provide evidence-based information relevant for professionals, and to suggest strategies for minimizing negative effects on parents, children and families when similar crises arise in the future.