You may not remember exactly where you were when you heard the news that COVID-19 was going to shut down much of normal life, but few of us can forget the weeks and months that followed March 2020.
On March 11, the WHO declared the spread of the COVID-19 virus a global pandemic. Lockdowns and shutdowns spanned the globe. Many people across the world started spending a lot more time with their immediate family.
Some people have fond memories of this time of increased family togetherness; for others, the memories are not so fond. My family had a good dose of each.
I had the luxury of being able to pivot to work from home and enjoyed (yes, enjoyed) being home for all of our toddler’s potty training. On the other hand, losing our typical structure was hard.
Our 3-year-old had loved seeing the “linons” (taxidermized lions at a local museum), choosing board books at the library and reddening her little cheeks running around at the park. All of that ended in a day. After months of being home, our daughter was initially reticent to get out and play normally when we started venturing out more.
160 studies on pandemic family life
In general, how did families fare over the pandemic? Some student research assistants in my lab have been helping me tackle this question. So far, we’ve reviewed over 160 published studies about couples or families during the pandemic, and our initial look at the data has revealed some interesting patterns.
The pandemic was not one thing for all families, obviously. And it likely wasn’t even one thing for any family. Many reported their relationships experienced, at the same time, both benefits and challenges from the pandemic, and our family can certainly relate to that. For many families, the challenges were far heavier than mine, as they navigated staying financially afloat and switched to homeschooling for one or more children.
For those with difficult family dynamics such as fighting, mental health problems, addiction or violence, the pandemic seemed to enlarge the consequences of those dynamics, especially in underresourced groups.
Despite the different ways the pandemic affected couples and families, an overall pattern seems clear: COVID-19 on its own didn’t have the power to make or break a relationship — but it did tend to reveal and amplify whatever strains were already there.
Families under pressure
If you want to know where the holes in a bucket are, all you need to do is put some water in and watch. In cases where couples and families had good relationship patterns already, and enough resources, the pandemic often brought them together.
The opposite was also true. Families facing relational challenges, mental health distress, economic pressure isolation and a lack of resources in general were, in many other cases, pushed to the brink.
While COVID-19 was stressful, in other words, for many families, it did not cause so much as reveal and heighten issues that were already present.
Of course, the pandemic didn’t result in languishing across the board — not even close. Interestingly, it looks like very similar proportions of couples and families reported things getting worse, staying the same and getting better.
Responding differently to pressure
So, what accounts for the difference? Varying stress loads facing a couple or family certainly played a role. As confirmed in the research, those who carried a heavier outside-stress burden and existing mental and relationship struggles fared worse in their relationships (e.g., things like losing a job, struggling to make ends meet, losing services they relied on, carrying a heavy caregiving load or generally having limited access to resources — as well as experiencing acute and chronic sickness, or the death of a loved one).
All that matters, and yet stress did not affect all families the same. There were actions people took that created a buffer — or, on the other hand, made things worse. For instance, couples did better if they supported each other, shared responsibilities and communicated well (something researchers call “positive dyadic coping”). Conversely, in relationships where there was blaming, withdrawing and criticizing, the impact of the pandemic hit harder.
Again, it seems the pandemic may have stirred up an intensified version of whatever patterns already existed in relationships. The relationships that fared the best had a healthy dose of teamwork, cooperation and emotional closeness. They were also able to find routines and structure in the absence of typical moorings. Finally, they were situated in environments with a lot of support, and they had resources to draw on (such as access to child care and services, a flexible job, and even simple things like proximity to a nice outdoor spot).
Most of our families probably fell somewhere in the middle of the spectrum from languishing to flourishing during the pandemic.
2 key takeaways
Here are two summaries of the complexity we’ve observed in this research:
First, when you invest in your family relationships and mental health, you prepare for disasters.
Now is a wonderful time to take stock of how things are going in our relationships and have conversations about them. Maybe you also need support in your mental health. Even small things like introducing a little more structure and a few more automated habits around eating, sleeping and moving your body in your daily life can help keep moods afloat when stress rises. You may even make that call to a family member, friend or therapist that you have been putting off.
Second, when large-scale stress hits any society, we need to look after our most vulnerable. But even better, doing what we can in our families and communities now to bolster those in need is smart preparation for whatever catastrophe may lay ahead. Whatever we may be carrying emotionally, times like the pandemic multiply the weight of it in shocking amounts.
The power of strong, well-functioning relationships and communities drives resilience, but that power comes at a price. Responsive and caring relationships in our homes and neighborhoods don’t appear out of thin air. They require both effort and consistency over time.
Small things over time
The encouraging reality is that it’s often the little things in relationships repeated over time that matter most. Recent relationship research (outside the context of the pandemic) has shown that the “small things” we do for each other can be the real substance and building blocks of a strong relationship over time.
Ask yourself what your relationships, your mental health or your community might need from you to patch possible holes in the bucket. Then, send that text to check in, apologize, take a walk, meet your neighbors, take something off your partner’s plate, seize that opportunity to volunteer, say thank you, give that compliment or read that story to your little one — and make a habit of it.
Small steps today can help prepare us well for whatever lies ahead.