Households, bubbles and hugging grandparents: Caring and lockdown rules during COVID-19

Abstract

Efforts to combat the COVID-19 crisis brought mountains of legislation and guidance to coerce or encourage people to stay at home and reduce the spread of the virus. During peak lockdown in the United Kingdom (UK) regulations defined when people could or could not leave their homes. Meanwhile guidance on social distancing advised people to stay within ‘households’. This paper explores the legislation under lockdowns in the UK from March to October 2020 and the implications for women’s gendered caring roles. The regulations and guidance assumed that households were separate units and ignored the interdependencies which exist between households and between individuals and wider society. The continuing focus in the lockdown regulations has been on households as autonomous, safe, adequate and secure. This overlooks the interdependency of human life, gendered aspects of caring and the inequalities of housing and living conditions, highlighted by feminist scholarship.

First-time motherhood and intergenerational solidarities during COVID-19

“…The selected case studies of female family triads represent the two main models of solidarity flows discovered in the broader dataset of the GEMTRA project. In particular, they illuminate how the current crisis differs from adverse circumstances in the past in the sense of strongly limiting the capacity of direct intergenerational family support by default (Gulland 2020;Cantillon et al 2021;Radzińska, Pustułka 2021). Although previous crises also influenced family solidarities (Bengtson, Oyama 2007), the novelty of the coronavirus is entrenched in age-based vulnerability caused by direct contact (Glazer 2020).…”

“…Emerging research suggests that seniors who provide care to grandchildren during the pandemic increase their risk of exposure to the virus (Glazer 2020). As a result, mothers of infants and small children may be unable to benefit from assistance offered by older kin (Gulland 2020) who formerly provided childcare systematically or just from-time-to-time (Hayslip et al 2019;Wawrzyniak 2011). Due to the heightened risks, families must make difficult decisions about offering support during this crisis.…”

“…At first, we would not see our parents at all, then we'd see them in the forest to go for a walk, or in a garden with a 3-meter distance between us. This was all so extremely hard and unpleasant (Marta, G3, W2) Grandparents did not provide any help in childcare during the national quarantine (see also Gulland 2020), which could be interpreted as a strong period effect (Bengtson, Oyama 2007). Physical distancing was not limited to women, but also demanded by Aneta's father (G2) who saw himself and his wife as very vulnerable.…”

“…During the COVID-19 crisis, however, first-time mothers' capacity to receive assistance from older family members may diminish. Emerging research at the junction of family support and the pandemic has already highlighted that generational bonds and support flows have become strongly conditioned by interdependencies among providers and recipients of family help in the social distancing and self-isolation regimes (Ayalon et al 2020;Cantillon et al 2021;Gulland 2020;Glazer 2020).…”

“…Choices around solidarity practices became more complex with the novel coronavirus being a particular threat for seniors (Ayalon et al 2020;Settersen et al 2020;Gulland 2020;Stokes, Pettersen 2020). Consequently, it is important to question how distinct types of associational, affectual, consensual, functional, normative and structural solidarities (Bengtson, Roberts 2009;Szukalski 2019) are reconstructed and practiced throughout multigenerational kinship matrices during a global pandemic.…”