Community Containment and Family Relationships: Community-Wide Quarantine due to Covid-19 and Parent-Child Interactions

Abstract

This study aimed to identify the perception of parents of students attending private schools in the city of Tubarão, SC, Brazil, about the influence of community-wide quarantine due to COVID-19 on the interactions with their children. This exploratory and qualitative field research included semi-structured interviews held with ten families. Several aspects related to the quarantine were investigated, such as changes in the families' routine, feelings the parents experienced in the interactions with their children, difficulties faced in these interactions, and positive aspects. The interviews were assessed according to content analysis, from which categories of research emerged. The results revealed changes in the families' routine caused by distance education, less social contact, task overload, and impacts on professional life. The feelings the parents experienced included fatigue, guilt, stress, and emotional responses, adaptation to the change of roles, difficulty in implementing distance education, and more dependent children. A few positive aspects were mentioned: closeness, more mature children, and more affectionate interactions. A few families did not identify positive aspects. The results show the parents' lack of preparation to deal with the new contingencies, the importance of providing preventive parental guidance, and the need to assess the impact of the methods adopted to implement distance education.