Families and COVID-19: an interactive relationship

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Background

Compared to other aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic as it spread across the world, relatively few studies examined the differential impact of the pandemic on family relationships within and across societies, other than from an economic household perspective and in a limited number of countries. Nor was enough attention paid to the differential impact of family composition and living arrangements on the transmission of the disease and its outcomes: how ethnicity, gender, age, health status, occupation, income and housing intersect. Presented with growing evidence from social scientists, policy advisers became increasingly aware of the indirect and longer-term effects of the pandemic on the social, psychological and economic lives of families. The accumulating evidence also demonstrated the importance for policy development of understanding and taking account of the impacts of socio-demographic and environmental health determinants on the transmission of the disease between family members and its etiology within different population groups.

This Research Topic aims to fill gaps in knowledge about the interactive relationship between families and COVID-19 by exploring evidence from different international and disciplinary perspectives. Contributors will demonstrate how the pandemic and policy interventions can exacerbate or mitigate socio-economic inequalities.

The Research Topic will include original theoretical and empirical research articles, reviews and case studies that explore comparative international perspectives on the family−COVID-19 relationship, combining a range of disciplinary, institutional and methodological approaches.

Contributors are encouraged to focus on:

• the disciplinary methods employed in collecting and processing reliable quantitative and qualitative data about the interactions between families and the pandemic, and the intersections between ethnicity, gender, age, health status, occupation, income and housing

• the challenges that arise in assessing and brokering evidence about these interactions in different socio-economic and political environments

• how social science research evidence can be used to inform and shape policy, mitigate the impacts of the pandemic and improve outcomes for families in different policy contexts within and between countries in the immediate and longer term

Keywords: family structures, impacts of COVID-19, vulnerabilities, inequalities, policy responses

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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