Coping with homeschooling and caring for children during the UK COVID-19 lockdown: voices of working mothers 

Abstract

We examined working mothers’ experiences and feelings about homeschooling and caring for children while working during the summer 2020 COVID-19 lockdown in the UK. Eligible mothers were invited to participating in an on-line survey of open-ended questions that was distributed via social media between mid - June to mid-August 2020. Participants (n = 47; Mage = 39.6, range = 28 to 54 years) were predominantly white married working mothers and most had a higher education degree. The experience of combining homeschooling/caring while working was perceived difficult by many mothers and it was associated with feelings of stress about managing competing demands concurrently, guilt for not meeting the child’s needs, and worry over child socioemotional well-being and academic learning. Support from partner, work, and school were instrumental in improving maternal experience and emotional state. Finally, coping strategies that reflect mindfulness practices for stress management, were associated with positive experiences and feelings.

Caregiver-Reported Changes in the Socioemotional Wellbeing and Daily Habits of Children With Special Educational Needs During the First COVID-19 National Lockdown in the United Kingdom

“…In this context, the experience of the confinement and its consequences might have been more challenging for children with SEN and their families. A growing body of research has shown that caregivers with children with SEN/D found caring for their children during the lockdown difficult (Castro-Kemp and Mahmud, 2021;Kallitsoglou and Topalli, 2021). As expected, we also found that caregivers with children with SEN reported significantly high rates of family co-existence difficulty.…”

Working parents home-schooling children with special educational needs during a pandemic: How best can mainstream schools help through digital technologies?

“…Yet, challenges arose during the pandemic as schools had to communicate with SEN children by remote and digital means, with "rapid changes of teaching formats" (Nusser, 2021, p. 59). Support of this kind could be variable (Kallitsoglou & Topalli, 2020), and ACER (2020) reported that the majority of schools failed to give parents individualised learning instructions, and resources sent home were mostly worksheets.…”

The extreme gendering of COVID−19: Household tasks and division of labour satisfaction during the pandemic

“…Even amongst mothers who did not lose jobs, early research suggests women were uniquely affected by increased childcare demands (Andrew et al, 2020c;Kallitsoglou & Topalli, 2021;Minello et al, 2020). These demands give new meaning to the idea that "home becomes work" from Hochschild's (1997) study of the "time bind."…”

“…This increased stress manifests specifically in terms of elevated rates of anxiety and depression among parents of small children (Brown et al, 2020). In Germany, Czymara et al (2021) found that women are worrying considerably about the well-being of home and family (Kallitsoglou & Topalli, 2021), whereas men are worried about employment and the economy far more. Mothers in Iceland also reported feeling "overwhelmed, frustrated, tired, annoyed, and angry" (Hjálmsdóttir & Bjarnadóttir, 2021, p. 274) with having to manage others' fears and anxieties during the pandemic; and for a country at the top of the gender equity scale, mothers were frustrated with the lack of support.…”

“…Even amongst mothers who did not lose jobs, early research suggests women were uniquely affected by increased childcare demands (Andrew et al., 2020c ; Kallitsoglou & Topalli, 2021 ; Minello et al., 2020 ). These demands give new meaning to the idea that “home becomes work” from Hochschild's ( 1997 ) study of the “time bind.” While she was speaking specifically to the way people spent more time at work to avoid the stresses of home, COVID−19 has pushed work home and forced families to combine work and childcare.…”