When home becomes classroom: The shifting roles of Korean immigrant mothers in the management of children's education during COVID-19 in the US

Abstract

COVID-19 has disrupted women's lives by increasing their childcare and household labor responsibilities. This has detrimentally affected immigrant women with limited resources, who invest in their children's education for upward mobility. Based on a content analysis of 478 posts on the MissyUSA website, this study explores the ways in which Korean immigrant mothers in the U.S. navigate the management of middle and high school children's online education during lockdown. Before the pandemic, mothers' tasks were largely limited to scheduling and coordinating private-paid after-school programs that occurred outside the home. However, the pandemic transformed mothers into active coordinators of public middle and high school classes and of private online tutoring, and de facto schoolteachers at home. This breakdown of boundaries between the home and tasks normally relegated to the outside world has burdened mothers with augmented roles managing the ordinary functioning of their children's education during the pandemic.