In my dissertation, I discuss the challenges of student families during the COVID-19 epidemic, which have been newly exposed or strengthened by the state of emergency. I am interested in exploring how student parents experience the COVID-19 epidemic, what they define as challenges and what as new needs, what burdens or benefits of rights the epidemic has brought them and what support they receive. The study included student fathers and student mothers, which I obtained based on a random sample.
In the theoretical part, I define the concept of student families, present the basic rights and expose the needs and challenges of student families in general. Then I present certain needs, challenges and hardships through the aspect of the COVID-19 epidemic and define what changes the epidemic has brought to student families.
In the empirical part, I present the results of a qualitative study that show a different, but above all stressful, experience of the COVID-19 epidemic. New challenges and needs are exposed, such as economic distress with lower incomes, lower employment opportunities and greater needs for childcare, which parent students face in different ways, depending on the resources available to them. Due to the COVID-19 epidemic, students who are parents expose certain burdens, for example reducing the possibilities of exercising their rights as students and benefits, where allowances are mostly provided as part of measures to mitigate the consequences of the COVID-19 epidemic. An important source of support for student families during the COVID-19 epidemic is informal support like family, partners and close friends. Formal groups, dedicated to support student families, are not known to all students who are parents, which means less formal support during the COVID-19 epidemic.
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