Joy, adaptation, and agency in the resilience narratives of primary caregivers during the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has ushered in profound educational, occupational, and familial challenges for school-aged children and their primary caregivers. During this transitional period, resilience was often featured in pandemic discourse as a solution to managing these unprecedented shifts. However, very little concrete information was provided as to how caregivers should or could mobilize this oft-cited resource. Our qualitative study was designed to explore how primary caregivers survived or thrived, using resilience as an experiential window through which to better understand how they coped with the complex, unprecedented challenges ushered in by the COVID-19 pandemic. One-hour interviews were conducted with caregivers (n = 22, all but two identified as female). Analysis revealed that primary caregivers understood resilience to be surviving the pandemic and making it through with the fewest scars for both them and their children. Caregivers cultivated resilience through finding joy during the hardships, supporting their children’s adaptations to the changing context, and resisting rules. Surviving the pandemic required resilience, and while this emerged in caregivers’ definitions, their lived experience highlights how joy, supporting adaptations, and resistance were employed to cultivate resilience.