Heidelberg Institute of Global Health, University of Heidelberg, INF 130.3, 69120, Heidelberg, Germany.
Kindernetzwerk e.V, Am Glockenturm 6, 63814, Mainaschaff, Germany.
BMC Public Health. 2024 Jun 17;24(1):1595. doi: 10.1186/s12889-024-18983-z.
COVID-19 impacted families globally, restricting movement, and changing daily routines and family dynamics. In order to explore and contrast children's and parents' experiences and perceptions of life during COVID-19, we used Pike's distinction of emic (an insider's view) and etic (an outsider's view) and adapted the concept to the family level to differentiate between children's and parents' own perspectives (emic) and their view of other family members (etic).
Our qualitative study is based on face-to-face in-depth individual interviews with parents (n = 13) and their children (n = 16) and included migrant families as a hitherto underrepresented group in COVID-19 research in Germany. Interviews were recorded, transcribed in NVivo and quality-checked. We employed thematic analysis to explore similarities and differences in perceptions and experiences of children and parents at the family level and across the entire data set.
We identified the following major themes in parents' and children's experiences: managing role and relationship changes within the nuclear family, coping with social expectations and demands, and re-evaluations of life's priorities. Parents' etic views on children showed strong overlap with children's emic view in terms of physical movement restrictions, experiencing good and tense family times, and internalizing rules. For issues such as experiencing stigma, divorce or language acquisition, parents' views were not reflected in children's accounts. Children's testing experience, by contrast, was more nuanced than parents' perceptions of it. Children's etic views of parents, a perspective rarely found in qualitative research with children, overlapped with mothers' experiences of role strain.
The consideration of parents' and children's emic and etic perspectives provided deeper insights into family members' experiences, navigation, and views of COVID-19 measures. Applying the emic/etic distinction to the family context enriches the sociology of childhood studies and enables a more nuanced understanding of diverging experiences within families and should thus be further explored within and beyond epidemics in order to guide future pandemic measures.
COVID-19 疫情在全球范围内影响了家庭，限制了人们的行动，并改变了日常生活和家庭动态。为了探讨和对比儿童和家长在 COVID-19 期间的生活经历和看法，我们使用了 Pike 的内外视角（emic 和 etic）区分法，并将这一概念应用于家庭层面，以区分儿童和家长自身的观点（emic）和他们对其他家庭成员的看法（etic）。
我们的定性研究基于对父母（n=13）和他们的孩子（n=16）的面对面深入个人访谈，并纳入了移民家庭，这是德国 COVID-19 研究中迄今为止代表性不足的群体。访谈进行了录音、在 NVivo 中进行了转录，并进行了质量检查。我们采用主题分析来探讨家庭层面和整个数据集内儿童和家长的看法和经历的异同。
我们在父母和儿童的经历中确定了以下主要主题：在核心家庭中管理角色和关系的变化、应对社会期望和需求、重新评估生活的优先事项。父母对孩子的etic 观点在身体活动限制、体验良好和紧张的家庭时光以及内化规则方面与孩子的 emic 观点有很强的重叠。对于经历耻辱、离婚或语言习得等问题，父母的观点并没有反映在孩子的叙述中。相比之下，父母对孩子测试经历的看法比孩子对自己测试经历的看法更加细致入微。孩子对父母的etic 观点，这是儿童定性研究中很少见的观点，与母亲对角色紧张的体验相重叠。
考虑父母和孩子的 emic 和 etic 观点提供了对家庭成员经历、导航和 COVID-19 措施看法的更深入见解。将 emic/etic 区分应用于家庭背景丰富了儿童社会学研究，并使我们能够更细致入微地理解家庭内部的不同经历，因此应该在疫情内外进一步探讨，以指导未来的大流行措施。
