2.3a Qualitative Methods
Balancing Parenting, Work, and the COVID-19 Pandemic
When schools, childcare centers, and workplaces closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, school, daycare, and work moved inside the home for many worldwide. Parents of young children faced significant challenges taking care of their children while also working. Younger children cannot navigate online learning, read teacher instructions, or occupy themselves for any meaningful duration. Further, they need more help meeting their basic needs, such as eating and staying safe. This arrangement persisted for months beyond the initial shelter-in-place orders because many childcare centers closed for a more extended period or even permanently (Lee & Parolin, 2021). Across the United States, approximately 16,000 childcare facilities closed permanently, and those that are still open face staffing shortages (Lurye, 2022).
Photo 2.4
A Mother Working Remotely and Taking Care of Her Children
Jessica McCrory Calarco and her research team were already studying parents when COVID-19 appeared. They pivoted their research to pandemic parenting to discover “how mothers in different-sex dual-earner couples account for inequalities in pandemic parenting” (Calarco et al., 2021, p. 1).
Reviewing the Literature
They started by reviewing the literature on how dual-earner couples manage childcare. Reviewing the literature means that they read peer-reviewed research about their topic before collecting data for their study. That first step showed that women did a larger share of childcare than fathers before the pandemic. Thus, the researchers were not surprised to find that (1) mothers reported that their unequal childcare arrangement was practical, and (2) extra childcare during the pandemic fell on them. Therefore, the pandemic may have led people to do even more of what they were already doing. For women, this meant increasing their time spent on direct childcare.
Further, women often have lower incomes and are more likely to work part-time compared to men Therefore, for men to take on extra childcare, they would have had to reduce their more highly paid work hours, or the household would need to live on less income. Couples may have felt it was practical to keep unequal childcare duties, due to the inequalities women face in the labor market that led to them being the lower wage earner in their family.
Qualitative Research
Calarco et al. (2021) used qualitative research methods to answer their research questions. Qualitative research is a way of uncovering the meaning of non-numerical data, such as field notes, interview transcripts, visual images, audio recordings, and so on. Qualitative approaches include conducting fieldwork observations and in-depth interviews.
Fieldwork Observations
To do fieldwork observations, the researcher goes to the field site to observe social phenomena repeatedly. For example, a sociologist interested in how teenagers form friendships could spend time with them at school and school-related activities, such as football games, school dances, and club meetings. A sociologist would spend a great deal of time (several hours each week for one to two years) seeing how teenagers start, keep, and end friendships. Their observations would focus on how much time students spend with each other, the content of their conversations, and so on. These observations should uncover the processes of friendship that occur in face-to-face interaction. A researcher using fieldwork observations takes field notes — either during or right after their observations.
In-Depth Interviews
In in-depth interviews, the researcher presents a series of questions or prompts to the research participant. The researcher will then ask follow-up questions and encourage the participant to give in-depth answers to reach a shared understanding. For example, sociologists could interview teenagers about how they started, kept, and ended friendships. Interviews allow sociologists to hear people’s explanations for their behavior and attitudes to help understand the meaning people give to them. The researcher usually records the interview and transcribes it. Transcribing means the researcher uses software that converts audio recordings to written output. The researcher then analyzes these written transcripts, looking for themes in the data.
Sociologists may use fieldwork observations, in-depth interviews, or both in a single study. For example, what the researcher learns through interviews could guide fieldwork observations (and vice versa).
Calarco et al. (2021) used in-depth interviews as part of their data collection. They interviewed 55 mothers of young children and 14 fathers (partnered with the mothers in the sample). Qualitative research typically relies on fewer research participants than quantitative analysis because smaller samples allow the researcher to go into greater depth. Qualitative research collects data from samples of available people, which means the results are less generalizable. To be generalizable means that a study’s results should hold in similar contexts with different individuals.