From Danger to Uncertainty: Changing Health Care Practices, Everyday Experiences, and Temporalities in Dealing With COVID-19 Policies in the Netherlands

Abstract

Based on ongoing longitudinal research in families with young children, we investigate parents’ changing everyday experiences and health care practices of dealing with COVID-19 policies in the Netherlands from March to June 2020. We identify four key themes developing over time. In relation to evolving COVID-19 prevention policies, (a) the lockdown interrupted life and experiences of temporality. (b) Following the lockdown, risk management changed from fear to insecurities and (c) simultaneously, emotion management transitioned from solidarity to fragmentation. (d) Increasingly, pragmatic considerations allowed parents to tackle uncertainties and created room to normalize everyday life. We studied “change” by using a novel conceptual model for temporality and found distinct temporalities in parents’ accounts. In sum, we interpret this as a shift from danger to uncertainty, induced by policy shifts and pragmatically translating those to the lifeworld.