‘Trapped With My Children’ fathers’ caregiving experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

The study explores fathers’ caregiving experiences and roles during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as felt impacts of restrictions on the father-child relationship, using the Dynamic-Maturational Model of Attachment and Adaptation (DMM). Six fathers were interviewed using the Meaning of the Child (MotC), and an attachment theory informed Thematic Analysis (TA) established three main themes: ‘Threatening proximity’, ‘Absent fathering’, and ‘Confused need and anger’. During lockdown restrictions, many participants perceived the higher-than-usual proximity and intensity of family relationships as threatening to themselves and their children. For most of the fathers interviewed, this encouraged a passive fathering stance, centred around the idealisation of independence and emotional and relational absence. Most fathers also felt their own needs conflicted with their childrens’, leading to increased anger in the relationship, which tended to be feared and distanced from, or experienced as residing only in the child. Several fathers shared unresolved childhood experiences around their own fathers’ confusing anger which still informed their mental processing. The overall sense of feeling ‘trapped with [their] children’, and the resulting experience of retreating from the inter-personal space and active fathering role, made it more of a struggle for these fathers to focus on providing protection and comfort to their children (and partners) in the context of a life-threatening, global pandemic. Whilst this study focussed on a general population, implications for clinical contexts are discussed.