From social isolation to local support: Relational change and continuities for young fathers in the context of the COVID-19 crisis

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic and state mandated policy of lockdown in March 2020, has had observable impacts on the organisation of family lives and personal relationships. Despite the recency of these major changes, emerging evidence suggests that the crisis has produced a multitude of disproportionate and uneven effects along traditional lines of inequality including gender, age, race and class (Power et al. 2020). Even before the crisis young fathers experienced a range of disadvantages and were stigmatised because of their young age and gender. While the relative paucity of research about young fathers is beginning to be addressed (Neale et al. 2015), the recency of the COVID-19 crisis means that we know little of the immediate and short-term impacts of the pandemic on these young men and their families or about how families have responded and adapted to the new social conditions that the crisis produced. A key, emergent finding was that young fathers were at heightened risk of loneliness and social isolation because of the lockdown. At the same time however, the crisis also engendered new forms of social solidarity and community support in the localities in which the young fathers live.