How COVID-19 Changed Communication for Strained Families

Written in collaboration with Jacqueline Silverstone.

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, loved ones were reaching out to one another for support. Communication among family members helped people make sense of the pandemic and cope with uncertainty. There is at least one group of family members for whom this support may have been harder to come by. My new study published in Communication Research Reports identifies how marginalized family members, or black sheep* of the family, perceived changes in family communication during the first months of the pandemic (Dorrance-Hall et al., 2022). For some, family communication improved and they felt closer to their families than they had before the pandemic, but for many others, the pandemic, fraught with polarization, made communication in their families even worse.

Marginalized family members are family members who feel different, disapproved of, or excluded from the rest of the family. These family members tend to experience psychological distance from their siblings and parents, making communication during times of crisis challenging. On top of this, many are distanced from family for reasons connected to their identity, including their values and beliefs. Because COVID-19 was quickly polarized along political party lines, it became a charged topic. Despite COVID-19 providing a topic to talk about for family members experiencing distance and marginalization, these conversations can cause tension and conflict.

Our research team set out to understand exactly how marginalized family members felt the pandemic was affecting their family relationships. They surveyed 285 adults who identified as the “black sheep” of their family from across the United States in April 2020.

Nearly half of marginalized family members in this study reported their communication with family improved during the pandemic. The participants reported their communication with family was better in many ways including that it was more open, positive, respectful, inclusive, affectionate, and helpful.

For around 22 percent of marginalized family members, there was no change in the quality of their family communication. They did not think it was any warmer, more open, respectful, positive, or supportive. Another 31 percent of participants reported the quality worsened in the pandemic, that is, it became less respectful, warm, open, and helpful.

We wanted to get a sense of how marginalized family members perceived their family communication dynamics growing up and how these dynamics were associated with changes to communication during the pandemic. To do this, we used two concepts: family conversation orientation and family conformity orientation. Conversation orientation refers to how much families value open and frequent communication. Families high in conversation orientation communicate freely about various topics such as thoughts, feelings, and activities. These families are likely to make decisions as a family and respect each member’s input. Conformity orientation refers to how much families believe that all members should have the same beliefs, values, and attitudes. Families high in conformity orientation emphasize unity and obedience to parental rules. In a high conformity family, decisions are made by parents, with little to no reasoning or discussion with their children.

In the study, we found that long-standing family communication dynamics played a role in how families handled communication during the pandemic. Specifically, families with high conversation orientation, or those who talk frequently about a variety of topics, spoke with their families more often than was typical for them. Participants reported contacting their families more and their families contacting them more in the early days of the pandemic. They also reported that their communication became higher quality during the pandemic.

Marginalized family members from high conformity orientation families were the opposite. They contacted their families less and their families contacted them less.

Study findings support the idea that for some, the pandemic was beneficial to marginalized family members’ family communication. Families high in conversation orientation were motivated to contact one another and communicate more frequently than usual. On the other hand, marginalized family members from high conformity orientation families found they spoke with their family less, which may have provided a well-received reason to avoid family events or conversations.

Authors’ note: The term “black sheep” historically refers to the recessive gene for black wool in sheep. Black wool cannot be dyed and therefore was worth less, making black sheep less desirable to farmers. We recognize that the term links blackness with undesirability and therefore use the more precise conceptual label of “family member marginalization” wherever possible.