Struggling to ‘do family’ during COVID-19: evidence from a German mixed-methods study

Abstract

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.

Change in maternal well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic: Did pre-pandemic social support and parenting stress buffer or aggravate mental health disparities among lone and partnered mothers in Germany?

“…With regard to the COVID-19 pandemic, Germany acted in a quite strict way to control infections (e.g., Carroll et al, 2020;Zerle-Elsäßer et al, 2022). In addition to a large body of restrictions concerning social distancing (e.g., severely limiting the amount of face-to-face contact with others), contact with a nonresident parent was explicitly excluded from contact restrictions in Germany.…”

“…It could also indicate that they established new routines to alleviate some role strain during the pandemic. For instance, some mothers were able to reduce their working hours or work remotely during the pandemic in response to the additional load of childcare duties during daycare and school closures (Hank & Steinbach, 2021;Möhring et al, 2021;Zerle-Elsäßer et al, 2022;Zoch et al, 2021). This, and a reduction of other (social) obligations during the pandemic, could have dampened declines in well-being among mothers with higher levels of pre-pandemic parenting stress.…”