Do Pandemics Affect Relationships? A Qualitative Investigation on the Effect of a Global Stressor on the Views Concerning Marriage and Divorce
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https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10028625Keywords:
representations, marriage, divorce, views, Covid-19 pandemicAbstract
COVID-19 pandemic has been affecting the whole world since the beginning of 2020. In addition to health-related and financial effects, there seem to be significant psychological effects, including the effects on people's views and representations of marriage and divorce. This research aims to understand how the COVID-19 pandemic affects views on and representations of marriage and divorce by conducting two studies. In the first study, one-to-one semi-structured interviews were conducted with 31 participants (20 single and 11 married individuals) to investigate their evaluations regarding the effect of COVID-19 on people's view of marriage in general and their own views of marriage. In the second study, 298 entries on the most frequently used online social dictionary in Turkey (Ekşi Sözlük; in which 202 of were written under the title “COVID-19 makes people think of marriage,” and 96 of them were written under the title of “COVID-19 makes people think of divorce”) were analyzed, and meaningful thematic units were formed. Findings indicated that participants mostly mentioned both positive and negative effects of COVID-19 on the views and representations of marriage. There were both common (e.g., loneliness, violence, etc.) and distinct (e.g., sexuality, COVID-19’s effect on attitudes towards marriage, etc.) thematic units between the results of the two studies. Results were discussed in the light of the literature on Terror Management Theory, Attachment Theory, stress research, and growth perspective.
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