Parenting experiences of marriage immigrant women in South Korea during the COVID-19 pandemic: a descriptive phenomenological study

Abstract

Purpose: This study aimed to investigate the experiential meaning of child-rearing for marriage immigrant women in Korea in the context of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.Methods: Using the hermeneutic descriptive phenomenology framework developed by Colaizzi, 10 marriage immigrant women rearing preschool and school-age children were invited through purposive and snowball sampling from two multicultural support centers in Korea. The participants were rearing one or two children, and their original nationalities were Vietnamese, Japanese, Cambodian, and Chinese. Individual in-depth, face-to-face, semi-structured interviews were conducted from September 1 to November 30, 2021. We extracted significant statements from the transcripts, transformed these into abstract formulations, and organized them into theme clusters and themes to authentically capture the essence of the participants’ subjective experiences.Results: Four theme clusters with 14 themes were derived. The four theme clusters identified were “navigating child healthcare alone,” “guilt for not providing a social experience,” “worry about media-dependent parenting,” and “feelings of incompleteness and exclusion.” This study explored the perspectives of mothers raising children as marriage migrant women who experienced physical and emotional health crises due to the COVID-19 pandemic.Conclusion: The findings underscore that marriage immigrant women encountered heightened challenges in managing their children’s health and well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic due to linguistic and cultural barriers limiting access to healthcare and information. Additionally, these women experienced considerable emotional stress from perceived inadequacies in providing a holistic social and developmental environment for their children under extensive social restrictions.