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My Home is my Castle? The Role of Living Arrangements on Experiencing the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence From Germany

During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany, social restrictions and social distancing policies forced large parts of social life to take place within the household. However, comparatively little is known about how private living situations shaped individuals experiences of this cris...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Langenkamp, Alexander, Cano, Tomás, Czymara, Christian S.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8787109/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35087905
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2021.785201
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author Langenkamp, Alexander
Cano, Tomás
Czymara, Christian S.
author_facet Langenkamp, Alexander
Cano, Tomás
Czymara, Christian S.
author_sort Langenkamp, Alexander
collection PubMed
description During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany, social restrictions and social distancing policies forced large parts of social life to take place within the household. However, comparatively little is known about how private living situations shaped individuals experiences of this crisis. To investigate this issue, we analyze how experiences and concerns vary across living arrangements along two dimensions that may be associated with social disadvantage: loneliness and care. In doing so, we employ quantitative text analysis on open-ended questions from survey data on a sample of 1,073 individuals living in Germany. We focus our analyses on four different household structures: living alone, shared living without children, living with a partner and children, and single parents. We find that single parents (who are primarily single mothers) are at high risk of experiencing care-related worries, particularly regarding their financial situation, while individuals living alone are most likely to report feelings of loneliness. Those individuals living in shared houses, with or without children, had the lowest risk of experiencing both loneliness and care-related worries. These findings illustrate that the living situation at home substantially impacts how individuals experienced and coped with the pandemic situation during the first wave of the pandemic.
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spelling pubmed-87871092022-01-26 My Home is my Castle? The Role of Living Arrangements on Experiencing the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence From Germany Langenkamp, Alexander Cano, Tomás Czymara, Christian S. Front Sociol Sociology During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany, social restrictions and social distancing policies forced large parts of social life to take place within the household. However, comparatively little is known about how private living situations shaped individuals experiences of this crisis. To investigate this issue, we analyze how experiences and concerns vary across living arrangements along two dimensions that may be associated with social disadvantage: loneliness and care. In doing so, we employ quantitative text analysis on open-ended questions from survey data on a sample of 1,073 individuals living in Germany. We focus our analyses on four different household structures: living alone, shared living without children, living with a partner and children, and single parents. We find that single parents (who are primarily single mothers) are at high risk of experiencing care-related worries, particularly regarding their financial situation, while individuals living alone are most likely to report feelings of loneliness. Those individuals living in shared houses, with or without children, had the lowest risk of experiencing both loneliness and care-related worries. These findings illustrate that the living situation at home substantially impacts how individuals experienced and coped with the pandemic situation during the first wave of the pandemic. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-01-11 /pmc/articles/PMC8787109/ /pubmed/35087905 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2021.785201 Text en Copyright © 2022 Langenkamp, Cano and Czymara. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Sociology
Langenkamp, Alexander
Cano, Tomás
Czymara, Christian S.
My Home is my Castle? The Role of Living Arrangements on Experiencing the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence From Germany
title My Home is my Castle? The Role of Living Arrangements on Experiencing the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence From Germany
title_full My Home is my Castle? The Role of Living Arrangements on Experiencing the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence From Germany
title_fullStr My Home is my Castle? The Role of Living Arrangements on Experiencing the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence From Germany
title_full_unstemmed My Home is my Castle? The Role of Living Arrangements on Experiencing the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence From Germany
title_short My Home is my Castle? The Role of Living Arrangements on Experiencing the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence From Germany
title_sort my home is my castle? the role of living arrangements on experiencing the covid-19 pandemic: evidence from germany
topic Sociology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8787109/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35087905
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2021.785201
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