How is Covid impacting Human Behavior & Relationships ?

"Isolation is a stress-producing state, as one of our human needs is for connections"

— Sylvia Whitlock

                     Rotary Club of Claremont, California, USA

Covid-19 hit planet earth officially on Jan 2020 and its been nearly a year and half while it still continues to go stronger and impact human lives. With health workers at risk, hospital equipment like oxygen, critical medicines, vaccines in short supply, and death rates from the coronavirus spiking by the day, governments all over the world have mandated ‘social distancing’, closed schools and most businesses, and ordered everyone but essential service workers to stay home.

In response, parents like my wife and I have cancelled our children’s play dates and any exposure to the outside world. Nursing homes have banned visits to the elderly, who are most at risk from this virus. So much of the socialising that we all took for granted – concerts, live cricket [IPL], movies and meals with friends, office banter and congregational worship – suddenly is on hold.

Among everything, Covid has hugely impacted human behaviors, mental health & has caused stressed relationships.

"People who have enjoyed busy lives suddenly find themselves confined together, at a time of incredible anxiety"

The on-going pandemic has brought changes in social behavior. Lockdowns of virtually every type of gathering place, stay-at-home measures instituted to combat the spread of the virus, have forced many families and couples to live in much closer and continual contact than normally experienced. This has largely been a worldwide phenomenon, with some countries and cultures more dramatically affected than others.

With respect to those married, “When partners are together for an extended time in the same household, they can get tired of each other. Plus, they are stressed about health and safety and negotiating new responsibilities about work and family life.”  Pandemic may be forcing dissatisfied spouses to stay together for practical reasons. “Divorce can be expensive, and couples may be reluctant while facing economic uncertainty and/or health issues,” said a sociology professor who’s director of the Center for Family and Demographic Research. “These folks may feel ‘stuck’ and they could be delaying divorce until life feels more normal.” An option that gained traction was sales of online self-help divorce agreements, which rose by 34% in the 2020 spring compared to the previous year.

India is a country of high rates of child marriage and large populations. A Global Girlhood Report 2020 warns that some 500,000 more girls were likely to be at risk in 2020 of being forced into child marriage and one million more are expected to become pregnant. This increase will bring the total number of child marriages to around 12.5 million in 2020.

Before the pandemic, India, which accounts for one in three child marriages globally, had become a world leader in working to reduce child marriage, through education and awareness. COVID changed that. A harsh, long lockdown, which was implemented with just a few hours’ notice, left millions of daily laborers, and migrant workers without any work, pushing millions more into poverty. India’s economy contracted dramatically with schools closed across the country, with millions of families forced to consider child marriage to alleviate poverty.

There have been innumerable hot takes about the effects COVID would have on marriage and family life. Married people maybe facing extra stresses, the impact on married sex is unclear, husbands’ and wives’ commitment to one another is unclear. Moreover, the pandemic’s family fallout seems to have hit working-class and poor couples especially hard, as they are the very couples most likely to see their financial fortunes decline since March. 

Covid has shown us new ways to collaborate and continue human bond by stepping us into a virtual world. Fortunately today, technology offers us easy opportunities to strengthen our connections remotely. The pandemic is inspiring creativity online as artists dance and sing together through videos from home. Families celebrate birthdays, marriages & functions through Zoom. Students, from kindergartners to engineering candidates, meet in classes online.

As we learn to play, work and collaborate virtually, we are helping each other fend off loneliness and reminding each other just how vital we are to our mutual resilience. Human will learn more as time and new waves and variants of covid will affect our lives. But even if vaccine prevention, mask and other social measures are increasingly effective, we will have both the aftermath and the unknown infectious disease future to cope with. As a result, it is likely that traditional ideas of love and marriage will not go together like a “horse and carriage” without being whipsawed by marital stress and prospects of separation or divorce.