In Their Own Words: Qualitative Study of Parenting During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The authors aimed to understand the experience of parents and caregivers during COVID-19, including the challenges they faced and what helped them cope using the Strengthening Families (SF) Approach and Protective Factors Framework's five factors: parental resilience, social connections, knowledge of parenting and child development, concrete support in times of need, and social and emotional competence of children.

The Family Snapshot Survey was developed to assess the impact of COVID-19 on family life, including items for quantitative analysis and 2 open-ended responses. This national survey of 9000 parents recruited from an opt-in internet panel was conducted in 3 waves of 3000 in November 2020, February 2021, and July 2021 using the online YouGov platform. The 2 open-ended responses are analyzed here using qualitative thematic analysis based on the SF Approach and Protective Factors Framework for caregivers with children aged 0 to 5 years.

The SF factors were used to classify 770 responses, with many responses identified as containing multiple factors, representing their interrelated nature. A lack of concrete support was the most frequent challenge, and parental resilience was the most frequent support.

Access or lack of access to concrete support in times of need underscored many of the strengths and challenges, respectively. Participants described interactions between individual protective factors that allowed for safety, stability, or positive experiences. In future community policy creation, policymakers may look at how programs interact and allow families to access multiple protective factors at once, with a critical need for providing these concrete supports.