Resilience, Disillusionment, and Shifting Perspectives: Insights from Mothers After the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Major life events, such as living through a pandemic, can have profound influences on development. The COVID-19 pandemic presented unprecedented challenges to the ways in which parents lived their lives. Mothers’ workloads were magnified as they had to balance their own responsibilities and those of their children all within the confines of the home. Little is known about how mothers adapted over time and what they took away from the experience of living through this global crisis. The objective of the current study was to explore how life has changed for mothers three years after COVID-19 was designated a pandemic. Thirty mothers (<italic>Mage</italic> = 39) living in the Western United States participated in an interview between March and April 2023. Reflexive thematic analysis grounded within a hermeneutic phenomenological approach was used to analyze the transcripts. Four themes and one subtheme were identified around changes in perspective, family intimacy, gratitude, friendships, and coping tools. Mothers’ discussions highlighted both growth and challenges. They described increased feelings of family connectedness and agency, while also expressing negative shifts in their views on the goodness of humanity. The findings reveal that the pandemic had lasting impacts on mothers’ socioemotional and cognitive development, particularly in terms of relationships and worldviews. These effects are discussed within a context of a bioecological systems framework and life course theory. Insights from mothers’ lived experiences may provide valuable guidance for policymakers, healthcare professionals, and mental health practitioners, in developing interventions that can support mothers during and after crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]