Abstract
Informed by the family resilience theories, the purpose of this paper is to examine the resilience of family during COVID-19 lockdown crisis in Nanjing, China. In particular, the challenges these families face, the coping strategies they use, the roles of each member plays, and the resources they have are analyzed within the framework of the theories. The interviewed families were recruited with non-probability purposive and snowball sampling strategies in a gated community in Nanjing. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted to all the family members, except those under 18, in a total of 11 families. The study finds that the fluid and dynamic family structures embedded in deeply-rooted kinship system and subsystem in everyday practice are useful and effective resources to help family members develop resilience against COVID-19 crisis. This paper advocates that more comparisons of cross-culture, cross-social categories and social status in different cities and countries can be further conducted to explore the particularity of how families develop their own family resilience to deal with the COVID-19 and/or other crises.
Keywords
Introduction
The COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) outbreak wreaks havoc on humanity. Cases had been identified in 28 countries/regions by the World Health Organization (WHO) by February 11, 2020, of which over 99% of the confirmed cases were identified in China (Lai et al., 2020). A range of disease control measures were quickly deployed in China (Wang, Horby et al., 2020) including quarantine of individuals with confirmed or suspected infection, contact tracing, tracking down the emergence of epicenters, and so on (Xiang et al., 2020). Most important measure of all is the unprecedented countrywide lockdowns in China which have affected insurmountable portion of population in the country (Brooks et al., 2020; Zhu et al., 2021).
Beyond the disruptions in society and the negative impacts on economy, the mass quarantine and lockdown measures likely induce unprecedented psychological challenges to the general public (Horton, 2020; Qiu et al., 2020; Traunmüller et al., 2020; Wang, Pan et al., 2020; Zhu et al., 2021). Studies have shown that mental health issues such as stress, anxiety, depression, confusion, anger, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are inflicted as the results of various stressors during the COVID-19 crisis (Brooks et al., 2020; Xiang et al., 2020; Zhu et al., 2021). In addition, people likely face multiple and compounded stressors (Patterson, 2002) such as the loss of family members, health risks, shaken job security/financial stability, disrupted routines, uncertainties about the future, and many more (Karpman et al., 2020; Russell et al., 2020; Ying et al., 2020). The family as the most fundamental institution in any society and the members in which have to face all challenges inflicted by the fight against the virus. Synthesizing from the in-depth interviews of eleven families in Nanjing, China, the purpose of this paper is to examine the resilience of these families during the COVID-19 lockdown crisis.
Literature Review
Family Resilience Framework
The concept of family resilience refers to the capacity of the family as a functional system (cf. “family systems theory”; Brown, 1999; Crossno, 2011; Johnson & Ray, 2016) that can cope with and recuperate from life-disruptive challenges including societal crisis, natural disaster, and family tragedy. According to Walsh (2002, 2016) the dynamic process goes beyond mere adaptations, but foster further healing and positive developmental processes, a function of which may change over time (Southwick et al., 2014). The key mediating processes in family resilience—belief systems, organization patterns, and communication processes (Walsh, 2002, p. 132)—seek to recognize crucial variables that will strengthen the family’s capability to overcome and master significant adversities (Walsh, 1996, 2017), to enhance the functions and well-being of the family, to ultimately attain positive transformations.
Walsh (2002) emphasizes that single model cannot fits all families or situations; hence the functioning of a family and its resilience should be evaluated over time and in context that is specific to each family’s “values, structure, resources, and life challenges” (Walsh, 2002, p. 132). Various studies (Garmezy, 1991; Rutter, 1987) underscore broader perspectives of resilience that involve “the dynamic interplay of multiple risk and protective processes over time, with individual, interpersonal, socioeconomic, and cultural influences” (Walsh, 2012, p. 400). Combining ecological and developmental perspectives, families should be further regarded as open systems of which the collective well-being and resilience are susceptible to the risks and stressors from its broader sociocultural context (Walsh, 2002), particularly at key turning points (Rutter, 1987). The family resilience will evolve (i.e., build, regulate, and strengthen capacities, and so on) in a multimodal framework—multilevel, multisystem, multidisciplinary approaches—that allows families to positively manage the challenges ahead (Henry et al., 2015).
Applying Family Resilience Concept to COVID-19
The turmoil caused by COVID-19 crisis profoundly challenges the structures and the processes of family systems in terms of relationships, rules, rituals, and routines. Informed by the family systems theory (Carr, 2015; Fiese et al., 2019) and family resilience framework (Walsh, 2015), the study by Prime et al. (2020) is the first attempt to comprehensively synthesize and theorize the family resilience related literatures in order to gain insights to the anticipated issues related to individual development and family functioning during the crisis. The impacts from COVID-19 adversity on family (such as parent-child relationships, marital conflict and dissolution, sibling relationship quality) can be persistent and pose lasting influences on the structure and process of the family (Prime et al., 2020; Southwick et al., 2014).
Family Stressors Under COVID-19 Lockdown
COVID-19 crisis permeates the very fabric of our society, posing acute threats to the well-being of individuals and families. Many quantitative studies conducted in different continents (e.g., Africa, Blanton et al., 2020; America, da Silva et al., 2020; Oceania, Evans et al., 2020; Asia, Srichannil, 2020; Europe, Traunmüller et al., 2020) indicate that the family is significantly disrupted and in needs of urgent responses. Families are forced to maintain work-family balance at home during the lockdown. Closures of schools and child day-care facilities means the responsibilities of home education and childcare lie solely on the family caregivers (Cluver et al., 2020).
The well-being of the breadwinners and caretakers of the family is crucial to the overall family resilience to the crisis. While some parents are able to continue their works from home and maintain stable incomes, others might have salary cut-backs or even get laid off from their employments that creates abrupt financial burden to families. Psychological stress are induced due the career disruptions and uncertainties (Zhang et al., 2020). Some professions cannot be executed remotely, such as the construction (Araya, 2021) and healthcare (Ying et al., 2020) sectors, in which the workers are under higher health risks and additional stress. The unexpected challenges during the lockdown create and intensify various stressors to each of the family members.
The Role of External Resources to Family Resilience
Families’ capability of handling COVID-19 crisis is highly dependent on the variables such as parental level of education, poverty, physical and psychological health, and the availability of resources for distant-learning. Families that are already in poverty, overcrowded housing condition, and limited working flexibility face greater risks. Availability of external resources and supports can relax family stressors and minimize social inequalities (Fisher et al., 2020). Sufficient supports from community (cf. Yip et al., 2021) and government (Jeong & Kim, 2021; see also UN News, 2020) are crucial to alleviate the anxiety of families during the crisis.
Research Interests
While the world is still assessing the profound meanings of the pandemic to humanity, this study attempts to fill the gaps in the current literature on the social impacts of COVID-19 in two folds. Informed by the reviewed literature, the theoretical framework for the current study emphasizes on how family collectively faces the crisis by acquiring all possible resources (inside and outside the family system) to reinforce its resilience toward the adversaries. Furthermore, in contrary to most of the studies that adopted quantitative approach, our study employs qualitative in-depth interviews that documents everyday living experience of the families during the crisis with the following specific research questions:
What issues do the family face during the lockdown?
What coping strategies do the families deploy to tackle specific issues?
What roles does each member play to contribute to the challenges and solutions in the family?
What are the resources inside and outside of the families to help them cope with the challenges?
Data and Method
Since the COVID-19 pandemic is a current world crisis, research about its impact on human societies is still emerging. It is appropriate and effective to employ a qualitative exploratory approach to conduct this pilot study (see Teherani et al., 2015) that is to explore, understand, and analyze the development of Chinese family resilience during the pandemic in China. This study collected data with semi-structured in-depth interviews. The participants were recruited from non-probability purposive and snow-ball sampling strategies. Based on the criteria for the purpose of the study, the interviewees were recruited by the community officers who worked closely with the residents in the community on the daily basis. Once the interviewees learned about the natural of the study and their rights, and agreed to participate in the study, the community officers submitted their names and contact information to the researcher. Since signing a written informed consent is not a commonly practice in China, this study did obtain clear oral consent from the interviewees, and their participation in the study was strictly voluntary.
This study was conducted in a community within the city of Nanjing, Jiangsu Province of China. To minimize the chance of revealing the participants’ identities, the community is referred to as Community A which has 4,670 residents in 1,592 households as of now.
This study took the following three criteria for families recruitment: age, family types and social characteristics. One is to classify different types of families based on the age of adult males in the family. The family is a unit of the social structure, and its position in that structure is determined by the position of the husband and father (Goode, 1964). Although gender equality is undergoing changes in China, China’s ranking of women’s status in the world is still relatively low (World Economic Forum, 2019). Based on this, the recruitment further identified the families according to three types based on the age of male heads of household: young families under 35 years old, middle-aged families aged 35 to 59 years old, and elderly families over 60 years old. The second is to choose interviewees according to the current situation of Chinese family types. Chinese family research categorizes family structure into nuclear family, direct family (blood related), compound family, responsible family, disabled family, and other types of families (Yuesheng, 2006). Core family is the most common type of family in contemporary China, and direct family is also an important form of family. After 1980s, nuclear family and direct family account over 85% of the total number of families in China (Yuesheng, 2013). Therefore, the families selected in this study are mainly nuclear families and direct families. Thirdly, a large number of migrant families from rural China have emerged during the reform, where major developments took place in urban areas. This study intended to explore their struggle during Covid-19 crisis. After the reform and opening up, China’s population mobility has increased sharply. In 2005, the total number of floating people in the country reached 147.35 million (Duan et al., 2008); in the beginning, the majority of migrant workers were single, but in 2000, family migration became the primary choice for migrant workers (Zhou, 2004). Unlike local families, migrant families lack a social support network in their destination and do not have equal access to formal social support networks those local families do.
The lead researcher in this project provided half a year of service in the Community prior to this research. A kind of “acquaintance relationship” with the families was established, which helped the participants to open and express more revealing information on their experience during the pandemic. The interviews were conducted by the key researcher between October, 2020 and April, 2021. The family resilience on fighting Covid-19 and other odds during this very first city-wide lockdown, between January and April 2020, only reflected the experiences during this period.
A purposive snowball sampling was used to recruit 11 families from this community. These participating families were found through the schools in which the children of the families were studying, or from the recommendations of the community officers, who oversaw the management of the community and the community affairs. They were chosen with three main criteria: (1) They came to settle down in the community within past 10 years at the time when data were gathered; (2) The families have two or more family members; (3) They were all living in Community A when the outbreak began. The recruited families fall into two categories: one is the local families, another is the “floating families” from other cities. “Floating families” are common in the cities. They tend to come from more rural areas seeking employment opportunities in cities. These jobs tend to be low-skilled, labor intensive, and paid-low. The migration and settlement experiences that are different from those who were born and raised in the city might shed different light on the practice of resilience during the COVID-19 crisis.
The families selected for in this study are small families with three to four members, known as nuclear families or backbone families. This household size of families reflects the current practice in China’s cities. It is a result of the one-child policy implemented at the end of last century that led to the decline of fertility rate and number of children, hence the decrease in family size. Secondly, the continuous improvement of housing conditions and the independence of the young generations from their parental families after marriage also led to the gradual reduction of family size.
An in-depth interview was conducted in-person with each of the participating family members at the interviewees’ homes at their convenience. The key researcher interviewed the participants individually in a separated space to ensure the confidentiality of the shared information. With consent, the interviews were taped. Analytic induction was used to examine each taped interview. The transcriptions were read and re-read for emerging themes which were informed by the theoretical framework and guided by the specific research questions (see Wodak & Krzyżanowski, 2008). Each interview lasted about 2-hr long. The personal information of the interviewees was kept confidential.
Table 1 shows the key demographic information about the participating members of different families, of which their names are coded with three or four letters: the first letter represents each family; the follow letter(s) represent(s) the corresponding role in their family (M = man/husband; F = female/wife; CM = child/son; CF = child/daughter; if the child has a spouse: CFM = son-in-law; CMF = daughter-in-law).
The Background Information of Eleven Families.
Background
Family Change in the Contemporary China
The family has always been an integral and functional unit of any human society. Its structures and everyday practices evolve to meet different challenges people face in a particular time. They can be shaped by a wide range of factors such as economic conditions (Conger et al., 2010), people’s livelihood (Collins & Mayer, 2006), women’s education and social roles (Bianchi, 2011), ideologies and values (Marciano, 1987), social policies (Hu & Peng, 2015), just to name a few. China is not exceptional, even though changes vary from country to country.
Chen (1985, p. 194) sums up previous studies and points out that contrary to the common belief, the average size of Chinese families under one roof in mainland China was relatively small. Historically speaking, the reason for this is the difficulty to pull resources together to maintain a multi-generational household (Levy, 1949, cited in Chen, 1985, p. 194). The trend continues in the modern China. Hu and Peng (2015) sum up the censuses of 1982, 1990, 2000, and 2010 and conclude that “the data showed that there was a rapid increase in the number of family households, a continued shrinking in household size, and a trend of simplification in household structure. The proportions of the one-couple household and the two-generation standard presented the largest rise and the largest fall, respectively” (p. 1). Yet, deeply rooted in its Confucian philosophy and values, these separated couple-centered conjugal units, connected with strong kinship network, continue to hold the intergenerational relationship tightly together for different types of needed supports (Hämäläinen et al., 2019).
China’s household changes are far more complicated than just about its size when probing into different stages of an individual’s life course (Shen et al., 2021, p. 457). Xu and Xia (2014) argue that these smaller households have become not only nuclear in structure but also diverse in form, and that individual interests will precede family or collective interests (p. 32). However, Chinese nuclear families, which work differently from the western ones, are unique in that “they are anchored within the extended family network, and have constant physical interactions and emotional and financial exchanges with extended family members (Xu and Xia, 2014, p.36). When in needs to respond to the social and economic reform in China, this type of family structure becomes fluid and dynamic, where the needs of individual family members and balance between family and social situations are met, and the family members collectively overcome life challenges (Xu & Xia, 2014).
In sum, studies show that Chinese family structure and form are not static. People adapt and adjust when situations rise. Yet, the family practice has always been bound in closely knitted extended family network, loosely following the influence of Confucius values.
The Functions of Community in China
The concept of community is used to denote a group of people with close social relations, mutual compassions, and similar values within a particular group, neighborhood, and people in a particular milieu (see Leung, 2018). In order to solve everyday issues in the community, governing bodies have been gradually developed to effectively allocate resources, organize welfare services, and solve various societal problems. Through the participations of specific neighborhoods and village members, the community helps to promote common values and improve the shared living spaces, providing the spiritual and physical grounds for social interactions and lifestyle pursuits. Yet, Bray (2006) observes that “[a]t the turn of the millenium, a new campaign to ‘build communities’ was launched throughout the nation [China] with the objective of establishing the residential ‘community’ as the new basic unit of urban governance” (p. 530). The development of the system of community in China has been advocated from the top of the government, started during the transition from a planned economy to a market economy (Ding, 2007, p. 18) as a response to a series of problems caused by the collapse of the “danwei” (Chinese:
A Brief Introduction of Nanjing and Community A
As the capital of Jiangsu Province, city of Nanjing was ranked 10th in GDP of 2020 and is among the more developed regions in China. The gated community (Community A) focused in this paper is a very typical type of residential design located in Jiangning District (
Built in 2014, Community A is adjacent to the university town and a famous commercial center frequently visited by college students who favor shopping, eating and other recreational activities. Most of the retail shops in this commercial block has been operated by out-of-town merchants. The vibrant commercialization is accompanied by the redevelopment of the surrounding area where the community is located. Community A is mostly composed of local families that were displaced during the land acquisition and demolition for the development of Jiangning Science Park in 2002, mixing with some migrant worker families from other regions and provinces. The resettlement apartments for the affected local families were allocated according to the family sizes and built areas of their demolished houses. Generally, each household was given two to three resettlement apartments in the community. Most of these resettled households stay in one of them until the sons moved into other ones within the community after they get married. The practice of staying in close proximity with immediate families adheres to the traditional Chinese rural customs, along with the duty of the children taking care of the elderly and the necessitation of sons’ inherence, and so on. Therefore, nuclear family has become the main type of household resettled in the community. Furthermore, two groups of migrant families reside in Community A: one of which is self-employed owners of small local businesses and the other group consists of temporary workers who work in the city to maintain basic livelihood of the families. The social status of both groups are relatively substandard, although the former group has better economic conditions than the second one.
The Evolving Situation of COVID-19 in Nanjing
At the beginning of January 2020, the Nanjing Municipal Government implemented containment strategies with the gated communities and recommended residents to avoid unnecessary travel. For crowded public areas, screening was deployed at the checkpoints to monitor body temperature, mask wearing, and other mandatory epidemic preventive measures. As the pandemic situation improved by the end of February 2020, Nanjing and the rest of Jiangsu Province began to gradually restore food delivery services and the nine other major industries. In March 2020, movement of people in the cities were slowly restored with the use of various tracing measures from the government, such as the mobile Suzhou Health (Sukang
However, resurfacing of local infection cases in July 2021 forced a city-wide nucleic acid test for all inhabitants in Nanjing. Some gated communities were locked down again and the “avoiding unnecessary travel” recommendation was reissued by the Nanjing government.
Findings
“Divide But Connected”: Proximity of the Extended Family’s Residency
The research conducted in this paper shows that the organization patterns of the Chinese families are not rigid but flexible and adaptive. In the face of the crisis, these families rearranged their lives to keep the family members safe and connected by adjusting the living habits in order to maintain the effective functioning of the families.
Nowadays, many adult children move away from their parents home and live by themselves after getting married. However, after the outbreak of the epidemic, many children and grandchildren will return to their parents’ home, which is better to take care and support each other for fighting the epidemic.
FM was a 48 year old and worked for an electric power company. The wife operated a bakery shop. Their son was 24 and a senior in a university. The nuclear family F used to live with FM’s parents until their son reached the age of 10. When the two families lived together, the couple and the parents each had their own room in an 80 m2 apartment.
When the three generations lived together, and the parents were still young and healthy. The parents took care of the young couple and the grandson. FM and his wife decided to move out because their son needed more space. Yet the two households are within 10 min driving distance.
The couple often visited the parents and started taking up caregivers’ role because the parents became older. They couple usually helped buy groceries for them and monitored the parents’ health. This is how this family has shown supports of each other when needed, a generational exchange as resilience to challenge in life course. FM’s explained how he could support his parents before Covid-19 was that, “our parent are old, we buy and send most of the daily necessities to them. We also need to go home to check their physical conditions, and they are very dependent on us.”
This routine had been interrupted because of the lockdown. The couple could no longer visit the parents regularly. FM realized that his parents were very worried about the epidemic. FF initiated the idea of moving back to take care of the parents. She recalled why she made such decision, “my parents-in-laws are old and always believe in various fake news of the epidemic, which easily worries them. I believe if we stay with them, they will feel very safe.”
At the time of the interview, that was when the lockdown policy was no longer implemented, the F family already moved back to their own apartment and the family life in both families were back to normal.
The H family shared similar experience with his parents’ household like Family F. Family H used to live in rural area. After the government had demolished his house for redevelopment, H was allotted two houses in the same community from the state, one for oneself and the other for his son. HM was 65 year old, and her income mainly came from the government pension, which was not enough. HF was a 61-year-old woman with no income. HM’s son was 39-year-old, married and operated a computer store with his wife, and the young couple had a 10 year old son.
Before the epidemic, even if they did not live together, the extend family maintained the mutual support through daily interactions and material gifts. HM said “Because they live very close, my son’s family always come to my apartment for dinner and then walk back to their own house. My son drives to buy daily necessities from supermarket and deliver them to us.” However, after the outbreak of the epidemic, the business of the computer store struggled
The dynamic adjustment of household living arrangement enhanced the family’s ability to resist economic crises. Reducing the daily expenses brought about by cohabitation is a survival strategy proposed by families who are not financially wealthy during the economic crisis because of the epidemic. This is a manifestation of family resilience and survival. At the time of the interview, the son’s computer business was still struggling, and the two families still lived together.
The case of I family shed similar light to the families discussed above. IM was 65 years old and retired from a street distract administrator position; his wife was a housewife. He had a daughter who was 37 years old, married, and worked in a state-owned enterprise. His son-in-law was a doctor at the local traditional Chinese medicine hospital; IM also had a 9-year-old granddaughter and a 6-year-old grandson. The old couple lived alone in a two-bedroom apartment. Their daughter also bought a three bedroom apartment nearby.
Due to the fact that the daughter’s family was a dual career family and their grandchildren were in a daycare, IM and his wife were responsible for self-care and the care of the daughter’s family. This is the support and assistance provided by the Chinese extended family to families with children in the early stages. IM said “Both my daughter and son-in-law are busy with work. They always send children to school and we take them back to our apartment. After my daughter finishes work, she comes and dinners with us. Then, she goes home with her children.”
With the arrival of the lockdown, IM’s daughter was even busier and FM’s son-in-law was in high risk of infection because of his profession in a hospital. IM asked his daughter to move back and let son-in-law stay alone at his daughter’s apartment. FM reasoned that, “This living arrangement is the best for all parties. We are all safer not being worried to get infected by his son-in-law if he did get infected by Covid-19 and more convenient for us to take care of the rest of the family members.” After the outbreak of the epidemic, changes in family living habits were to minimize the potential risks to family safety, which is also a dynamic adjustment of family protection capabilities.
Same as the F family, IM’s daughter and her family also moved back to their apartment, but IM was still helping to take care of her grandchildren.
Although living apart, the older generation, as an immediate extension of nuclear families, continues to be a common practice in Chinese family structures especially in up-keeping younger generations’ wellbeing. The three cases above show the common purpose of staying together to minimize impacts of the adversity onto their family and to strengthen the resilience by accommodating each other’s physical and emotional needs. The families re-organize their family living arrangement during the Covid crisis to better cope with risks and to achieve financial, emotion and instrumental resilience. Nonetheless, all the cases indicate that interdependency across generations existed prior to COVID-19; the usual “connectedness” enabled family resilience to readily evolve and execute numerous adaptive responses during various crises.
“Divided and Connected”: Kinship Networks as System of Families Supports
The tightly knitted networks of the families in our study formulate systems of resilience reinforced by their effective interactions that are essential to overcome their daily challenges and to evolve the supports to the nuclear families and other family members in dealing with crises.
Each relative in the kinship network has different integrating resource capabilities; their supporting roles in the kinship network are also different. Some kinship networks exercise reciprocal support. Some relatives can offer more than others. Whether the supports are unidirectional or reciprocal, the kinship networks in this study show stable, cohesive and effective physical and moral supports toward strengthening family resilience.
GCM was 27 years old and worked in a government department. GM was 59-year-old and works as a community gatekeeper. GF was 60-year-old and worked for hourly wages. GCM and GM frequently participated in epidemic prevention tasks in the community; in turn, the government and the community provided them with sufficient personal protective equipment (PPE). They shared PPE with their nearby relatives. In return, relatives were counteroffered homegrown vegetables. The mutual material gifts helped them both overcome some difficulties together. GCM was thankful to his relatives, “During the epidemic, supermarkets are often closed and we cannot buy vegetables. Fortunately, with their vegetables, we won’t go hungry.”
The material support between the G family and their relatives was mutual. However, due to the fact that both parties in a kinship relationship may not have the same ability to exchange resources, it may also be a one-way material resource assistance. This is the case with the H family. When the epidemic was at its peak, the PPE for the H family came from their nephew who worked in the hospital. HM said “When the epidemic was serious, my family and my brother’s family in Nanjing did not have masks, and everyone was very nervous. At that time, the nephew who worked in the hospital said that he had a way to buy masks, and he became the mask supplier of our whole family during the period of PPE shortage. This is what brothers and sisters should do.”
The one-way economic support from relatives is more evident in the C family. The J family received more significant one-way support from their family network. CM was 36 years old and moved from Anhui Province to Nanjing in 2000, working as a freight driver. CF was 34 years old and moved from Hunan Province to work. Later, she met CM and got married in 2010. Since then, she had been working as a housewife. They had an 11-year-old son. CM only had one sister in Nanjing, and her family ran a vegetable shop in Nanjing, which is very close to where he lived. BF did not relatives in Nanjing.
Before the epidemic, CM made a living by driving trucks and had a stable and high income. At that time, he often went to his sister’s shop to buy vegetables and gave her a small fee. In return, his sister also bought some clothes and study supplies for his son. However, after the outbreak of the epidemic, his family was in shortage of money because of his unemployment. The C family expenses were entirely supported by their savings and the financial support of their sister. CM said“During the epidemic, life is stressful as I could not go out for work and had no income. We couldn’t afford vegetable in the market, and just took everything what we ate from my sister’s shop. My sister also gave me some money to support our lives from time to time.”
The expression from CM reflects the helping relatives seen as “responsibility” for some Chinese. When a relative is in crisis, other relatives feel they need to help without expecting any reward. The three families interviewed express the importance of supports from relatives during the ongoing pandemic.
During the epidemic
Sharing Feelings and Messages as a Strategy of Sticking Together in Epidemic
Our study indicates that the communication processes and their adjustments are important to promote connections, provide emotional supports, make decisions, and ultimately enhance well-being of some families during the epidemic. The variety of contents and methods create multivariate strengthening effects that unite family members.
As discussed above, the DM family moved back to live with their parents during the pandemic. The time spent by the DM family at home significantly increased. The family of five had three meals together every day, and they spent time communicating during eating. DM said “We didn’t deliberately initiate any chat. But we ate three meals together every day, and we did chat while eating. When my parents were afraid of hearing rumors outside, I calmed their emotions and showed them broadcasted news. My son and wife also reminded my parents not to over think, and there is no immediate danger to us.”
In the E family, EM and his wife were both 47 year old and both were high school teachers in the same school. They had a son who was still in his third year of college. Before the outbreak of the epidemic, my son had been attending a university in another city for a long time, and their communication was only maintained by phone. However, during the epidemic, his son moved back to the parents’ home and studied online. Three of them were almost at home every day. They all felt that they relationship as a family had been improved. The son’s presence and his maturity helped the parents overcome uncertainties during the lockdown. Therefore, his parents felt more at ease facing the hardship.
ECM said, “During the epidemic, my parents’ anxiety has deepened because of unclear information, identification and misinterpretation of rumors. I tried to talk to them about the development and shared some real information with them so that they will be more at ease.” Moreover, because all three people are online at home, and FM and EF are not skilled in the use of web conference, they often need the help from ECM. This kind of help allows EF and EM to feel stable support from their son, as well as greater unity and interdependence among family members. EM appreciated what her son had gone through with them and said, “We are so old that we don’t know how to face the Covid. Fortunately, my son is at home and he helps us a lot to solve technical issues for online teaching. At that time, I thought it was really good to have a son.”
Both B and G’s families had one or more people engaged in epidemic prevention, which allowed them to communicate more with their families and received more spiritual and emotional support during the epidemic. BM, 33 years old, was a freelancer. BF, 33 years old, was a community worker. They also have a 10 year old son and a 5 year old daughter. BF was responsible for the daily epidemic prevention work in the community, and was in the high risk of infection. BF often felt very anxious about infection, and family members provided her with sufficient mental support. BF said, “Once, I had a fever and I was extremely scared. As soon as I came home, I saw my husband and started crying. He comforted me and said, “Don’t scare of yourself. There are no confirmed patients in our community, so don’t be too nervous.” The child also ran over
G’s family is slightly different from B’s family. Because G’s family had two persons who engaged in duties of epidemic prevention, they talked about the epidemic with equanimity . As GCM said, “Usually, at night, our family members talked about the epidemic at the dinner table after work, especially my father. He talked more about the epidemic news, which could be considered a way to relieve tension. During the epidemic, the family has spent significantly more time communicating together and reminded each other of safety issues.”
During the lockdown, the communication process among the family members mentioned above included clarification of viewpoints, open expression of emotions, and cooperative problem-solving (see Walsh, 2012). Family members who can obtain more accurate information shared their information with others and helped other members obtain the correct information about the epidemic in order to establish positive attitude. The members with weak information acquisition ability openly expressed their unease about the epidemic in family, and felt safe and stable after receiving sufficient information from other family members. All family members were able to express their emotions and seek emotional comfort during the epidemic. At the same time, when family members face the risk of the epidemic, they didn’t evade the problem, and expressed support through words and work together in a cooperative and win-win manner to face various pressures and panic. It is through perceived effective communication that family members help them better face crises, overcome difficulties, and enhance their resilience.
On the contrary, the following two cases show different approaches to deal with worries. the CM andDM both refrain from discussing on issues that would potentially cause emotional distress within the families. As a preferred choice of communication, transmitting joy but not pain is another way of easing anxiety. These two males in their families believed that handling adverse situations on their own is a way to maintain collective wellbeing and harmony of the families. CM and DM both expressed similar thoughts. For example, CM said, “When I went out to work, my wife also said it was dangerous outside and asked me not to go out. I just tell her everything is okay. If I talked too much and showed too much worries, their family members could be more anxious. So, I just told them good news.”
DM has also said similar things. DM, 42 years old, is a temporary worker in the D family, while DF, 38 years old, was unable to work due to long-term illness. DM’s son, 17 years old, was studying for the third year in a senior high school and preparing for the college entrance examination. Not only did KM have to earn money to support his family, but the responsibility for taking care of family members also fell on him alone. So, DM always says, “During the epidemic, my son was facing the college entrance exam. I could not let the epidemic information affect him and helped him enroll in a university smoothly. My wife has been sick for a long time, and she never wants to hear information about COVID-19. So, I rarely talked to them about the epidemic at home. and just told them good information.”
When one person in the family takes on the responsibility of the entire family and other family members rely on him, he believed that sharing only good news and avoiding anything negative would help the situation. At the same time, if family members shared the experience of the epidemic, and the family was responsible for not receiving emotional support from the family, the person reduced his need for emotional support from the family . At this point, the lack of communication in forms of sharing negative information and emotions is also a way for these families to protect themselves during the pandemic. Therefore, the way and content of family communication are different for some families. Each family can choose the appropriate communication method according to their perceived right moves.
Government as the Source of Family Security and Faith
When the city was short of PPE, the families had difficulty to find their own supplies. Our study shows that the less resourceful families, particularly the low-income families, rely more on supports from the community. BF, a community worker, described, “The community not only distributed masks and other anti-epidemic materials to the residents, they also emphasized on paying additional attentions to the low-income group and the elderly who are living alone.” Government and community resources and supports lessened stress in the community. Moreover, the necessary provision of confidence from different administrative levels help strengthen the resilience of the less fortunate during the adversity.
Change to past tense Sufficient supports from the community and government are crucial to alleviate anxiety of the families during the crisis. Family G earns just lower the average of low-income families in Nanjing. KM is 67 years old, who is unemployed, physically disabled, and without a stable income. KF is 79 years old, who is unemployed, without stable income, in long-term illness, and unable to move freely. KF has four daughters and only lives with her youngest daughter and son-in-law, but they also have no stable income. Because of the family conflict about uneven distribution of family property, KF’s other three daughters have rarely visited their parents. The living expense of KM and KF has always been based on national receiving low income benefits, and their daily lives take care of each other by the elderly couple. During the pandemic, the situation of the two elderly were worsen with medical issues that require frequent visits to hospitals. The overclouding burdens of time and money prevented the couple in obtaining any PPE. Due to their vulnerable conditions, the government’s support has become the only source for them to overcome difficulties. GF said, “Community office workers were given ten disposable masks to us in one month, and it’s better to have something than nothing. During the epidemic, I couldn’t go to the hospital regularly without a bus. My husband went to the borrow a tricycle from community office and took me over. Sometimes, there were a kind community worker who send me over.”
The distribution of resources from the community helped vulnerable families to stay safe during the pandemic. Various institutions provided strong supportive efforts to the residents of which the guidance from authorities become a sought-after anchorage to their beliefs.
The community, in fact, already established an online social platform before the epidemic to promote mutual assistance among the residents. FF appreciates the convenience of the platform and revealed that her family “obtained shopping information from and posted [their] requests in the QQ group (a chatting app); some neighbors or community workers would help out.” The virtual information sharing mechanism helped alleviate confusion and distress from misinformation, strengthen the residents’ belief in the collectivistic approach to well-being of the community as a whole.
Our findings show that the community administrators have provided supports to create a sense of safety and security for everyone in the city. This strengthens the confidence in individuals, who in turn could help their families to face the challenges of Covid. The community did their best to offer comprehensive epidemic information and updates on government measures. Different channels were used in the community, including news broadcast, social media release, epidemic prevention hotline, and home visits to ensure information is effectively disseminated. DM and DC recalled, “There wasn’t any loudspeaker in our gated community until the arrival of the epidemic.” BF believed that the “official information is more reliable than a lot of misinformation and disinformation informed by getting daily updates from watching official news. He added, “I didn’t know when the epidemic would end, but we were not worried because we have our government.”
The newly wedded young couple of Family A is both community officers for Community A. AF was concerned about the pandemic yet she appreciated the effective measures taken by the community to control the spread and added, “The community installed a camera at the entrance which can capture access to people in the community, arranged staff to measure temperature during home visits, and provided some basic PPE.”
All families mentioned above received certain level of government and community supports that were crucial to ease family stressors during adversity. They expressed that they had faith that everyone could be safe during the epidemic. This belief was built upon the information obtained from the official sources and were confident about the measures conducted by the government. Their trust in the government became an essential element to stabilize emotions in the everyone that benefited their families and strengthened their belief that their family life would become increasingly safe and stable.
Discussion & Conclusion
The quarantine and lockdown measures impose physical and psychological impacts onto the families in China and jeopardize the well-being of family members, forcing existing family systems to readjust, and putting family functions under unprecedented stress. Analyzing in the perspective of family resilience theories provide insights on what challenges the families in our research faced and how they developed solutions to deal with the COVID-19 lockdown crisis.
This research was guided by the family resilience theories as a perspective to explore how some Chinese families in Nanjing fared during the Covid-19 crisis. This study sheds some light on several key components that help families face challenges and crises, namely, the dynamic of the family system driven by the interdependent functioning of systems, and subsystems that encompass the belief systems, organization patterns, and communication processes which vary over time. These interlocking components provide insightful understanding of our case studies.
Limited studies have taken the cultural aspects into account. While the family viewed as a universal institute created to perform specific functions (see Gittins, 1993), such as reproduction and socialization to maintain the operation of a society, different cultures develop various strategies and practices based on one’s own cultural and religious values. Our study finds that a set of cultural-specific examples to gain insights on how Chinese in mainland China deal with the challenges in their own family system.
While study focusing on how family life changed in terms of childcare, grocery shopping and other everyday arrangement during Covid lockdown (see Biroli et al., 2021) and psychological effect on children and families (Morgül et al., 2020) and living arranglement (Evandrou et al., 2021) in western countries, this study offers a glimpse on responses to lockdown among some Chinese families in China. Our study shows that the fluid and dynamic structures of Chinese family is instrumental during COVID-19 crisis in preserving the integrity of family functions. The dependency on family to upkeep their emotional well-being is significant in Chinese society. By rearranging daily routines and adjusting internal communications, the families in our research are able to build strong resilience against the major adversity and to keep their family system intact.
Our study explores all one- and two-generation households prior to the pandemic, which reflects the prevailing trend in mainland China. The transformation of the family structure in China is a response to the societal change that continuously nurture the nuclear family to be the dominant family structure for the past 40 years, up to the start of COVID-19.
Contrary to most of Covid-19 related studies which are mainly quantitative (cf. Mohler-Kuo et al., 2021) in nature, our qualitative data, which offer interviewees’ perspectives and their living experiences, reveal that the one- and two-generation households are mainly elderly couple family and nuclear family. While study conducted in UK (see Evandrou et al., 2021) indicates that changing living arrangements during Covid-19 crisis is associated with increased stress, the nuclear family households in this study reveal flexibility and willingness to merge into three-generation immediate family household—mostly from younger generations to older ones—and find the arrangement helpful. Some families in this study stresses the virtue of respect and duty of caretaking of their parents and elders. Hence, the capacity of family resilience under additional stress is sufficiently expanded to sustain the family functions, despite of which is challenged in China by the shrinking of family size, rapid mobility rate of nuclear family, and geographical separation.
Our research suggests that the two male figures in the family, husband and/or father, undertakes significant responsibilities in taking care of the nuclear family and their own parents during the pandemic. Although this trend is undergoing tremendous changes, our two cases suggest that the cultural practice of family in mainland China that is patrilineal and patrilocal (Hämäläinen et al., 2019, p. 227). The husbands/fathers resume the duty of main breadwinner to provide financial support to the family in the midst of economic downturn, to uphold the stability of the family functions, and to protect the family, especially the younger generation(s), from exposures of physical and psychological risks.
The interviews show that the elders in our study were greatly affected by the COVID-19. The households are mainly one-generation senior “empty-nest” family with occasional two-generation households with adult child(ren) who is/are still single. Similar to the study about the negative impact of Covid-19 on the psychological health of the elderly in Europe (Brugiavini et al., 2022), the pandemic not only potentially expose their physical health to pre-existing vulnerability, their mental health is also in distress due to disrupted social life and limiting daily activities, their physical connectedness and sense of security have been weakened.
Before the crisis, the literature indicates that the intergenerational interactions are frequent and well-planned, often necessitated by emotional and physical needs. During the lockdown, the youngsters “return to the nest” with their nuclear family in order to communicate closely with the senior family members and to sustain the mutual supports—accommodating the daily needs of their parents and maintain the caregiving to their child(ren). It seems that some families in this study find mutual support by moving back to the nest beneficial to the struggle against Covid-19.
Although modern China sees more nuclear families than other forms of families, extended families can be highly functional in addressing the overall needs of family members, particularly during the pandemic. The constant physical interactions and emotional/financial/material exchanges with the members of the extended family provide unwithering supports and comfortable fallback during the COVID-19 crisis, at least shown in our cases. It seems that the three-generation extended family households among these families are the preferred formation and crucial to reduce the impact on the family systems and subsystems during the lockdown. In addition to the usual functions of elderly care and childcare, this family/household type exhibits better capability in fostering family strengths in the pandemic by frequent communicating, collective learning, mutual comforting, and long-term healing across different generations.
In the face of the unprecedented risks posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the supports from government and community in mainland China are crucial in maintaining the order of the society. Governments, including China’s, in the world faced unprecedent challenges when attempting to control the spread of the deadly virus and develop measures to meet the needs of their citizen. The governance in China, often seen as a top-down approach, studies also argue that its pluralist governance structure allows the ruling party to initiate governance reforms and delegate autonomy to lower administrative levels with flexibility (Bai & Liu, 2020, cited in Ramay & Babur, 2020). Different levels of governments focus on disseminating operational and moral guidance to protect the public health, to alleviate anxiety of the public, and to reinforce (family) belief system through official channels, ultimately to retain collective harmony of the society. The community (or street-level) officials’ duties have always been assigned to work close to meet the community needs. In the meantime, the vital role of the community is to execute and reinforce the guidance, and to distribute critical supplies of personal protection equipment to the needed, with the aim to reduce inequalities and suppress the heighten risks caused by poverty and lack of resources.
The COVID-19 pandemic has created tremendous turmoil to the society in China and beyond. Yet the dynamic and adaptive systems of handling the chaos and stresses are manifested in different levels of the society, from the top governments down to communities and families. Chinese families, theoretically argued, have unique ways of handling the stressors, partly due to the Chinese family systems and the deeply rooted values in the Chinese culture. The temporary rearrangements of the living conditions increase the flexibility of the households in coping with different types of hardship, while the consolidations of resource provide supports during the abrupt crisis. The systems and subsystems of the society and the families in China are strategic in handling the pandemic which facilitates the strengthening of family resilience. These families reported in this study basically expressed that their family members and relatives did help themselves “ride through” the lockdown challenges. They believed what they contributed to or received from other family members and relatives was a blessing.
Yet this study reveals several limitations. Our research data are limited to a community in Nanjing. China is one of the most populated countries in the world. Research systematically includes other regions and cities, rural areas included, would yield better understanding of certain cultural and subcultural practices that can generate stronger concepts and theories for further studies. Embedded in qualitative approach to the topic, we attempt to shed some light on family resilience by factoring in the cultural specificity, in this case Chinese family. In addition, as mentioned before, this study mainly focused on the male narratives in the household. Further studies should include multiple voices from the same family. We cannot neglect the fact that China is a culturally and subculturally diverse nation. There are a great range of diversity among different social categories such as gender, class, and region for examples. Last but not the least, various levels of public interventions, such as government policies and community support, shall be taken into consideration. Comparison of cross-culture, cross-social categories and social status in different cities and countries should be further explored. More importantly, researchers should continue to examine on under what circumstances why some families and individual family members feel their strategies are not resilient, what else they wish to do that could help themselves better during crises. In short, we hope that this qualitative approach to the study of family resilience during Covid-19 can help identifying variables for future quantitative studies which can generate more reliable and generalizable theories to advance our understanding of this important topic.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
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Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research is funded by Social Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province [20SHD006]
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Data Availability Statement
Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study.