The Impact of COVID-19 Lockdowns on Intra-household Interactions in India

B Devi Prasad, A Eswara Rao, Sumati Thusoo, Vedika Inamdar

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic brought the institution of family and intra-household interactions during the lockdowns into focus. Apart from speculative essays and social media content, there is a dearth of empirical data on the interactions within families globally. To understand the impact of the stay-at-home diktat, this paper examined survey data (N = 388) on these broad domains: intra-household interactions, including interpersonal communication, work from home, leisure time, use of digital media, and overall subjective well-being. Our findings reveal increased food consumption and relationship-centred conversations among the sample households, followed by an increase in women’s responsibilities in the context of work from home. Elderly respondents, as compared to youth, and those from multigenerational households reported better well-being.

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This paper was originally published on Economic & Political Weekly Vol. 57, Issue No. 16 on April 16, 2022