Families' main concerns, conflicts and coping strategies during the COVID-19 lockdown

COVID-19 pandemic lockdown greatly impacted all areas of society (health, economic, school, social, and so on) and of personal development (individual, family, labour relations...). Family microsystems are vital for their members, as they are the main contexts for their development and socialisation, where they also find much-needed support. Understanding how this crisis has affected families is therefore of the utmost importance. The main purpose of this study is to analyse the main concerns, sources of conflict and the coping strategies perceived as necessary during the COVID-19 lockdown by both foster and non-foster families, and by families with and without children. In this descriptive mix method study 462 people from different regions of Spain participated (79 from foster families, 383 from non-foster families; 311 with families with children 45.4 years and 82.6 % are women; and families without children 32.6 years and 79.5 % are women. An online questionnaire was designed with socio-demographic questions, variables on the impact of COVID-19 on the family and three open-ended questions to learn about the families' perceptions during lockdown on: a) main concerns, b) reasons for family conflict, and c) necessary coping resources. Following inductive method, to identify common themes among participants' responses, content analysis of these answers was carried out. The final categories established with the agreement of all researches of this work are included in the study. Once this process was completed, the SPSS 25.0 program was used to perform descriptive and frequency analyses of the characteristics of each type of family (foster and non-foster families; families with and without children) and to determine the rate of occurrence of each category. Overall, the results showed that the different types of families (being a member of a foster or non-foster family and having or not having children) present differences in their concerns, sources of conflict, and strategies demanded, but they tend to agree with what they reported as most relevant. Concretely, although the participant families are mainly worried about health concerns, they also point out work and family issues (concerns for the family, for the education and discipline of children, and the impact on socio-family relationships), while political issues, such as the management of the pandemic or the situation in the country were not a major source of concern. Particularly, among foster families, concerns related to their own situation (e.g., visits with biological family, the future of the foster child) and, among families with children, financial concerns. Likewise, conflict tend to be presented in participant families during the lockdown, above all those related to the management and organisation of their daily routine. It also highlights the daily coexistence, linked to the lack of space and personal time derived from the lockdown. Finally, families indicate that psycho-emotional support would have been the most needed during lockdown, followed by school support. These results will help those professionals, businesses and politicians to develop social plans that match the needs of families and adapted to their family structure during this crisis and the return to normality. Likewise, to face the current crisis in an optimal way and following the European recommendations, it would be necessary that, on the one hand, the authorities provide families with psycho-educational support to help them improve their family functioning. On the other hand, it would be advisable to strengthen health services and provide more support at the labour, economic and academic level for the proper development of members of the family system and society as a whole.