No abstract

The COVID‐19 pandemic has caused significant stress for individuals, couples, and families. Divorced and separated couples with children face unique stresses amid the pandemic. This mixed‐methods study explored these challenges among 296 divorced and separated parents: namely 204 women formerly partnered with men, 34 men formerly partnered with women, and 58 women formerly partnered with women, who were surveyed during Summer/Fall of 2020. Participants described legal, financial, and coparenting challenges. Those who were not yet divorced described difficulties filing for or finalizing their divorce because of court closures and lack of responsiveness from legal professionals. Those who were already divorced also faced legal challenges, such as being unable to obtain a court date to modify custody arrangements. Financial challenges included renegotiating financial support obligations in the context of job loss. Salient coparenting conflicts, explored through closed‐ and open‐ended questions, included communication issues, different views on virus risk mitigation behaviors, financial issues (especially for those not yet divorced), and transitioning between households and handling remote schooling (especially for those with shared physical custody). Participants elaborated on COVID‐19‐specific challenges, revealing that (a) lack of communication or agreement regarding shared strategies for risk mitigation reflected and exacerbated challenging dynamics between coparents, (b) remote schooling was often the site of disagreement when one parent felt that they were doing more than their fair share of coordination and oversight, and (c) different perspectives on science were expected to lead to future contention when making a joint decision about whether to vaccinate children. Findings have implications for family and legal professionals working with divorced, divorcing, and separated parents.

[Extract] These findings provide an overview of changes in young Queenslanders’ attitudes, behaviours, and life pathways during the early spread of COVID-19 and public health restrictions to contain it. Evidently, this period of sudden, mass social and economic disruption posed heightened risks to the social, economic, and psychological well-being of the Our Lives cohort and those young adults they represent. The introduction of emergency welfare measures may have been a short-term buffer to some of these impacts, as were the opportunities found by more fortunate young people to strengthen existing relationships, and cultivate an inward focus on personal goals, interests, and health. Nonetheless, our research suggests both the risks and opportunities posed by COVID-19 are being experienced unevenly within the cohort, with the potential for a widening of social inequalities. Encouragingly, there were signs that political bipartisanship on the issue of COVID-19 has helped to reverse a long-term decline in young people’s trust in government and politicians generally. Further research on the Our Lives cohort will thus be critical for understanding the longer-term implications of COVID-19 for the lives and outlooks of young Queenslanders into 2021 and beyond.