Pandemic impact on family relationships and poor

people in Canada

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, the Canadian government and health authorities

have placed major cities on lockdown to control the disease. However, the implementation of

the government's stay-home- order. The performance of the Stay-Home-Order has brought

diverse aspects of influence on the development of Canadian couple's relationships.

According to Fostick (2020), Canadian couples might face an increasing divorce rate since

they spend much more time and space together in quarantine time, caused by conflicts

about financial difficulties, unemployment, and distribution of paid and unpaid work could

thereby arise. The government's lockdown has been a blow to many industries in Canada,

resulting in a significant increase in unemployment, which increased the economic pressure

on almost every family; the family relationships can be more intense because of the

unemployment of one of the parties. The social script has tended to require that women take

more responsibility for housework and child care. However, Since both husband and wife

stay home together, the husband might realize how much unpaid work like housework and

child care tasks there are for the wife in the family. Families may face problems of

redistributing unpaid work and the proportion of paid work undertaken by family members.

According to Fostick (2020), It is surprising that the financial difficulties in families are

increasing in a pandemic, the rate of divorce is still decreasing. Part of the problem may be

the price and cost of divorce, as the legal fees need new housing or loss of income within

the household. However, Fostick (2020) demonstrates the research following:

One study that analyzed the effect of income levels on the probability of divorce in

the United States between 1979 and 2009 found that as incomes increased, the

incidence of divorce in each state also increased.11 More recent findings for the

United States show that divorce rates in the country declined during the Great

Recession of 2008: over the period from 2009 to 2011, researchers estimated that
 about 4% of divorces that would have otherwise occurred did not occur – but

afterward, the divorce rate returned to its previous level.12 This could mean that

divorces were postponed in times of financial hardship, not foregone.

Even though the pandemic increases the possibilities that couples are concerned about

breakup or divorce, pandemic might amplify previous conflicts and increase tensions instead

of logically leading directly to the breakdown of family relations.

Due to the pandemic, the Canadian quarantine policy required most schools to switch

from on-campus programs to online programs at the beginning of the pandemic so that children

stayed at home to reduce transmission. After a few months, some elementary schools and high

schools are allowed to have partial on-campus classes. Due to Leclerc (2020), the stress of

parental tasks is increasing, and they have to balance the work and caregiving in a new way. In

general Canadian society, mothers tend to take more responsibility and work for the education of

children. According to the research by Leclerc (2020), "In 2015, for example, mothers spent an

average of 2.6 hours per day on child care as a primary activity compared to 2 hours for fathers

(Moyser 2018)."

Even the extent to which men are involved in homeschooling depends on their work's

nature and location. Women still do most of the work for homeschooling children before the

pandemic and after the outbreak of a pandemic. When husbands work at home, they tend to say

that parental tasks are of equal distribution. However, when wives work at home, they tend to say

they take most parental jobs.

 Reference

COVID-19 IMPACTS: Couple Relationships in Canada. The Vanier Institute of the Family /

L'Institut Vanier de la famille. (2021, March 27). https://vanierinstitute.ca/covid-19-

impacts-couple-relationships-in-canada/.

Leclerc, K. (2020, December 14). Using data from the third web panel survey, the Canadian

Perspective Survey Series 3: Resuming Economic and Social Activities during COVID-

19, conducted from June 15 to 21, 2020, this study examines gender differences in the

self-reported division of parental tasks during the pandemic. Caring for their children:

Impacts of COVID-19 on parents. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/45-28-

0001/2020001/article/00091-eng.htm.