Um der Frage nachzugehen, wie während der Corona-Pandemie Erwerbs- und Sorgearbeit vereinbart werden, analysiert dieser Beitrag die Situation von Eltern mit Kindern unter zwölf Jahren aus dem Blickwinkel des Doing Family und mit Rückgriff auf Hartmut Rosas Thesen zur Be- und Entschleunigung. Anhand von Daten des DJI-Survey AID:A 2019, dessen ergänzender Corona-Befragung 2020 und 20 qualitativen Interviews mit Eltern zeigen wir Bewältigungsstrategien von Vereinbarkeitskonflikten während der Corona-Pandemie auf. Die quantitativen und auch die qualitativen Daten zeigen, dass sich die Rahmenbedingungen für das Balancemanagement durch Corona drastisch verändert haben. Besonders intrapersonale Vereinbarkeitskonflikte haben sich durch die Corona-Krise sowohl in beide Richtungen (Work-Family und Family-Work) als auch bei beiden Geschlechtern verstärkt. Viele dieser Veränderungen resultieren in einer Verfestigung der bisherigen Arbeitsteilung zwischen den Eltern. Es zeigen sich außerdem Ambivalenzen: Während sich die Situation für viele Eltern verschärft hat, hat sie sich für andere eher entspannt, teilweise zeigen sich beide Tendenzen innerhalb derselben Erzählung. Diese Ambivalenzen sind mit Dimensionen von Geschlecht verwoben.

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Applying the concept of doing family, which centres on the organisation of, and the practices in, families’ everyday lives, our research questions focus on the efforts mothers and fathers undertake to keep everyday life going during the pandemic. We analysed two-wave panel data of the project ‘Growing up in Germany’, and conducted 20 in-depth interviews with mothers and fathers in order to examine their strategies in detail. Our findings confirm gender and other important differences, and reveal three major strategies to reconcile caring obligations with demands from paid work before and during the crisis.

This study examines whether a birth of higher parity affects mothers’ well-being. Literature documents that well-being is linked to a subsequent birth but differs in its conclusions about how and why. In particular, the underlying processes are not yet understood. There is some evidence that a subsequent birth impairs coparenting, the way parents work together, because parents have to adapt to and reorganize this new-person-in-context constellation. Also, the financial costs of children and the pressure this might put on the family system have to be considered. Applying the framework of the Family Stress Model, we examine the process of how a subsequent birth affects mothers’ well-being by considering both factors as mediators in a structural equation model. Using German two-wave panel data (AID:A 2009 and 2014; German Youth Institute, 2019) on 3,738 nuclear families, our findings suggest that, after a subsequent birth, if mothers perceive a deterioration in coparenting and their personal income increases at a lower rate, then these factors mediate the association between a higher parity parenthood and decrease mothers’ well-being. The findings are important for prevention and intervention because they suggest that a subsequent birth can negatively affect familial resources, such as the quality of coparenting, with risks for partnership stability as well as child development. The findings are also important for family policy because they indicate that a worsened personal financial situation after a subsequent birth affects mothers’ individual well-being negatively and might thus be relevant for further fertility intentions.

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