“I Think Resilience Is Being Able to, You Know, Take Stock of the Situation You're in and Kind of Rally and Work Your Way Through”: Exploring Structural Resilience among Primary Caregivers During the COVID-19 Pandemic

When COVID-19 became a global pandemic in March 2020, governments around the world implored citizens to “be resilient” for the greater good. However, very little practical information was provided about how people could mobilize resilience, which is typically presented as an individual-level resource. Our qualitative interpretive description study was designed to explore the structural factors that influenced resilience among primary caregivers of school-aged children during the COVID-19 pandemic in Ontario, Canada. Interviews with 22 caregivers revealed three key structural factors that impacted how they employed resilience during the pandemic: employment, community, and the broader resilience discourse. Together, these results suggest that the structures embedded within society were profoundly impacted by the pandemic, and while this adversity afforded primary caregivers an opportunity to build resilience, ultimately, they often were expected to do so without the supports they previously relied on, including employment and income stability, community supports, and supportive government messaging.