Impact of social isolation on the daily lives of homeoffice mothers during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

This study aimed to understand how mothers experienced social isolation in the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts on everyday life and future perspectives. Twenty women from different social status, aged between 29 and 45 years, who perfomed homeoffice work activities, participated in the research. Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted remotely. The corpus-based research consisted of the full transcription of the interviews. The results showed that the pandemic imposed significant changes in family dynamics and caused an overload in the roles played as mothers, wives and professionals. The participants were exhausted with the accumulation of new domestic chores and intensified demands for childcare. The conclusions suggested the urgency of giving visibility and listening to the psychological suffering of women, addressing the issues of the overload of functions that reverberated in the quality of life and children care.