COVID-19: everyday stories of life in lockdown as told by parents of young children in England

Pandemic-focused projects in Early Childhood have amplified concerns such as child poverty, separation/attachment, maternal anxiety, and other health issues. However, significant attention in actual reports in published literature to the affective experiences of young children was almost entirely lacking. This study created child-focused narratives which qualitatively characterise the salient issues of rejection, heartbreak, and sadness as six families in England with young children reflected on their experiences of ‘Lockdown’. The project embraced a life history case study approach within a purposive sampling frame and used dialogic interviews which revealed the myriad ways in which young lives were disturbed, not least as exigent events of care and affect displaced the familial and the familiar in the child’s life. The themes revealed the significant upheaval in the children’s experiences exemplified through five vignettes related to ‘shutting’: the management of Home–School relationships; the impact of proscribed contact generally; the fracture of family patterns of contact; the ‘darkness’ of lockdown memories; and the all-encompassing fifth theme: the disruption of the child’s self.