How sociocultural contexts may shape the impact of the COVID‐19 pandemic on couples' relationships

Abstract

The COVID‐19 pandemic continues to affect couples worldwide who vary in sociocultural values, norms, and expectations, but most work examining connections between pandemic‐related stress and couples' relationships has been conducted in the US or similar Western cultures. Guided by the vulnerability‐stress‐adaptation (VSA) model (Karney & Bradbury, 1995), we present a revised theoretical framework for evaluating how sociocultural contexts may moderate the ways in which pandemic‐related stress risks poor couple functioning or promotes couples' resilience. We briefly describe the theoretical model and associated relationship research in the pandemic context and then evaluate how two illustrative sociocultural contexts (country/culture and race/ethnicity) might impact pandemic‐related external (disease risks and stress exposure) and internal (psychological distress and felt belonging) stress and adaptive relationship functioning. Our review reveals that much remains to be learned about how couples embedded in different sociocultural contexts have adapted over the course of the global pandemic and highlights key areas for future research.

Celebrating the “good‐enough families”: Family challenges and resilience during global adversity

“…Ambiguous loss, which has been useful in studying specific phenomena, is now relevant for an overarching understanding of the current global experience of loss amid uncertainty. In this special issue, three papers selected the COVID-pandemic as the main adversity (Ceberio, 2024;Medina Centeno, 2024;Pietromonaco & Overall, 2024), a fourth paper chose the war in Ukraine (Vetere & Shimwell, 2024), and a fifth paper examined the wildfires and climate change (Ferreira et al, 2024). Two papers did not focus on a specific type of adversity; however, one examined ways in which families could guard relational security when faced with adversities threatening attachment relationships (Ber astegui & Pitillas, 2024).…”

“…Across studies, the impact of adversity was described at the different systemic levels: communities, whole-families, couples, and parent-children and individuals. Four papers included overviews of selected studies showing how the pandemic impacted families and communities (Ceberio, 2024;Medina Centeno, 2024) and couples (Pietromonaco & Overall, 2024), and how wildfires affected families and communities (Ferreira et al, 2024). Two articles focused on the experience of security, with authors using the attachment framework.…”

“…This seems especially important in order to avoid that a well-meaning action conducts to revictimization for these women already in vulnerable position because of age, gender, and overall lack of emotional and material resources as they fled their country for safety. Pietromonaco and Overall (2024) purposefully looked at the interaction between pandemic and context for understanding couples' adaptation. They presented a revised theoretical model explaining how sociocultural contexts, namely country/culture and race/ethnicity may impact pandemic-related stressors and how these affect dyadic relationship processes.…”

“…The need to carry out studies in diverse contexts and to be able to map which principles and findings go beyond culture and which ones are culturally idiosyncratic will be certainly in the forefront of family research in the following years (Lebow, 2023). For instance, as Pietromonaco and Overall (2024) pointed out in this issue, much of the research on the effects of pandemic for couples was conducted in the US and other Western countries, with more studies needing to address how couples in sociocultural contexts are dealing with the ramifications of this adversity.…”

“…Interestingly, amid the diversity, theories were a mutual compass that allowed for a shared understanding by authors and reviewers involved in this special issue (Relvas, 2023). In line with tends to happen with contemporary theories (Allen & Henderson, 2022), when thinking of global adversity authors used old theories to explain new phenomena (e.g., Boss, 2024;Ceberio, 2024;Medina Centeno, 2024;Vetere and Shimwell, 2024) and also expanded them by introducing changes that permitted to explain new realities in a more complex way (e.g., Ber astegui & Pitillas, 2024; Hendershot & Johnson, 2024;Pietromonaco & Overall, 2024). Yet, although theories were a common ground for colleagues from different backgrounds, the specifics of their application in the field (praxis) were the stage for some welcomed scholarly uproar.…”