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CONFERENCE PROGRAM AND ICGCS 2021

ABSTRACT BOOK

Gender and Pandemy

Thought, Attitude and Action: the Struggle of a Single

Mother in Raising the Children during the COVID-19

Pandemic in Indonesia

Riswani, Mahdar Ernita, Darnilawati, Hellen

Lastfitriani, Nurhayati

UIN Sultan Syarif Kasim

The social restriction policy implemented by the Indonesian government to prevent the

spread of COVID-19 affects the physical, psychological and financial aspects of society,

resulting in excessive anxiety. The skill of negotiating with anxiety was urgently needed. The

purpose of this narrative study was to explore how a mother as a single parent negotiated and

coped with the challenges in educating her children. Multiple semi-structured interviews were
adopted to collect narrative data. Related to the safety assurance during the pandemic, the

used of Zoom media, WhatsApp video, and WhatsApp text became an option agreement with

participants in the interviewed process. The advantage of the interview process by using digital

technology was that researchers could see the emotional expression of participants directly.

During the first interview, participants were asked to tell the background of being a single
parent and the challenges of adapting to the family environment, workplace and community.

The second interview focused on the conditions experienced by participants during the

pandemic and the participants' strategies in dealing with the problem, especially in educating

children. The third interview related to the participants' thinking, attitude and action plan for

the future. The interview results were stored in the form of recorded notes and text. The data
was then reviewed to get an important explanation that the participants emphasized. The

vagueness of the information was reconfirmed via WhatsApp chat. For further data

exploration, participants were given open questions related to the experiences faced during

the pandemic, such as: were there certain challenges faced in educating children, especially

during this pandemic. Thematic text analysis was used to examine the narrative of participants

related to their struggle in educating children during the COVID-19 pandemic. The data of the
interview results through Zoom were recorded and organized into a written data that was

then searched for the interrelationship of each lexicon that composes the sentence as

important information. After the data was read thoroughly several times, it was lexically coded,

phrases and sentences using different color codes. Based on the thematic content analysis

procedure (Braun &Clarke, 2006), the encoded data was classified into several themes to

review, link and summarize data (Spencer, Richtie, Ormston, O'Connor &Barnard, 2014). After
that, the data was interpreted interpretively and discursively. Based on thematic analysis,

qualitative data showed that participants faced a variety of challenges, including time and

activity management skills, difficulty focusing on work, concerns about children's education

and financial needs. We conclude that physical, mental and spiritual strength played an

important role in determining how to think, managed and faced the challenges of educating
children during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Keywords: COVID-19, Single Parent, Struggle, Anxiety, Children Education

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