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In health, in sickness: romantic relationships during the COVID-19 pandemic

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In health, in sickness: romantic relationships during the COVID-19 pandemic

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Content IN HEAL TH, IN SICKNESS:
ROMANTIC RELA TIONSHIPS DURING THE COVID-19 P ANDEMIC
by
Elisabeth Rose Pohaikealoha Shimada
A Dissertation Presented to the
F ACUL TY OF THE USC GRADUA TE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCT OR OF PHILOSOPHY
(SOCIOLOGY)
August 2023
Copyright 2023 Elisabeth Rose Pohaikealoha Shimada
Acknowledgements
I’d first like to dedicate this dissertation to Jennie Piohia, whom we call Nana, for her
love, wisdom, and faith. All her prayers in times of stress, all the times she held me when I cried,
all of our deep conversations, and all the times she cheered for me at the top of her lungs, are
burned into my spirit. I carry you with me always Nanny , and you have the best seat in the house
to watch my happily ever after . A hui hou.
I’d like to thank my family: Mom, Dad, Phil, and Baubau, for the many sacrifices they
made. Y ou spent time, money , blood, sweat, and tears in order to give me everything I needed to
reach the finish line. Thank you for being the wind beneath my wings. This Ph.D belongs to all
of us.
Thank you to the love of my life, Jesse, who talked me out of quitting a ridiculous
amount of times. Y ou believed in who I was, and who I could be, when I couldn’ t see it at all. I
can’ t wait to live out our dream: to grow old together at peace and in love. In the words of
Selena, “El dinero viene y va, pero el amor va a durar por el resto de tu vida.”
A huge thanks to my professors: Jen Hook, Rhacel Parreñas, Ann Owens, Emily
Smith-Greenaway , and Chris Finley , who threw me over the finish line with all their strength.
Thank you for your encouraging and in-depth feedback, which motivated and challenged me to
think more deeply than I ever thought possible. A special shoutout to my advisors, Jen Hook and
Rhacel Parreñas, who have mentored me from a student who knew nothing, to a teacher and
scholar who wants to learn everything.
Finally , to my cohort fam and my graduate student mentors Latoya, Mary , and Karina:
thank you for cheering me on, picking me up, and laughing with me over a meal. It has been a
pleasure to work alongside such kind and brilliant people. Y ou are my inspiration and my tribe.
i i
T able of Contents
Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………………..ii
List of T ables……………………………………………………………………………………..iv
Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………………....v
Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………..1
Chapter 1: Love, T ech, and T ime: Getting Creative During
COVID………………………………………………………………………………………...…..6
Chapter 2: I’m a Big Kid Now? Y oung Adults Linking Independent Identity , Romantic
Commitment, and Familial Responsibility…………………………………………………..…..30
Chapter 3: W orth It: The Role of Socioeconomic Status in Couples’ Negotiation of Risk……...54
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………….81
References……………………………………………………………………………………..…84
i i i
List of T ables
T able 1.1: Interviewees’ Relationship Statuses (N=42).................................................................16
T able 1.2 T imeline of Interviews (Month/Y ear/Level of Restriction, N=42)..........................16, 65
T able 2.1 Demographic Data for Y oung Adult Subsample (N=30)...............................................42
T able 3.1 Interviewees’ Relationship Statuses and Income Per Y ear (N=42)...............................65
i v
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic is an unexpected, unprecedented global event that has revealed
and exacerbated existing patterns in romantic relationships. Using in-depth interviews with 42
romantic partners (18 couples and 6 interviewees whose partners could not participate), this
dissertation uses the pandemic as a case study to analyze these patterns, including (1) the unique
ways that couples integrate digital and in-person communication to create closeness, (2) the
challenge young adults face in balancing their commitments to their families and partners while
becoming independent adults (3) the cumulative role of inequality as couples negotiate health
and economic risk. I find that through these processes, couples re-solidified their romantic bonds,
asserted independence by bridging their romantic and familial lives, and made decisions that
further advantaged or disadvantaged them in terms of health, finances, and the development of
their relationship. As they did this, couples have also (re)shaped meanings of time,
independence, and risk. While this project is situated in the family sociology literature, it has
interdisciplinary implications, particularly for research in social psychology and communication
studies.
v
Intr oduction
T echnological innovations, macro-level economic shifts, and evolving cultural meanings
have all impacted romantic relationship dynamics and outcomes. T echnological innovation has
created a digital dating market (Bauman 2013), and revolutionized the way that romantic
partners spend their quality time together (Jiang et al. 2013; Su 2016). At the same time, the
changing economy has meant that cultural benchmarks of adulthood such as home ownership,
long-term career stability , and financial independence have all become increasingly dif ficult to
achieve. This has created a new life stage between adolescence and adulthood called emer ging
adulthood (Furstenber g et al. 2004). Finally , rising income inequality and the rise of new family
forms have created “diver ging destinies” based on socioeconomic status for romantic partners
and their children (McLanahan 2004).
The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated and made explicit many patterns that already existed
in romantic relationships: the unique ways that couples integrate digital and in-person
communication to create closeness; the challenge young adults face in balancing their roles as a
responsible family member , committed romantic partner , and independent adult; and the
cumulative role of inequality in health and economic risk. This dissertation project uses the
COVID-19 pandemic as a case study to contribute to the rich literature on each of these topics.
The Rise of T echnology in Romantic Relationships
Whether technology has had a positive or negative impact on dating is a richly-studied and
often-debated topic in research (Bauman 2013; Castells et al., 2006; Lundquist and Lin 2015;
Rosenfeld 2018; T urkle 2015). At the same time, recent studies have also shown that couples are
increasingly integrating computer mediated communication (CMC) and face-to-face
communication (FTF), highlighting many mechanisms that link this integration with relationship
1
satisfaction (Kelly and Miller -ott 2022; Jiang et a. 2013; Su 2016; T arnutzer et al. 2023).
Because technology has been shown to alter users’ sense of time (Northrup and Shumway 2014;
W ajcman 2014), and partners’ perception of their time together is a major influence on their
relationship satisfaction (Booth et al. 1985; Gager and Sanchez 2003), I hypothesize that
technology’ s ability to distort partners’ perception of time is another mechanism that links FTF
and CMC integration with higher relationship satisfaction.
The social consequences of the pandemic create an analytical case to explore this, because
couples were forced to integrate digital and FTF quality time in new ways, in a social context of
intense uncertainty . The first paper of my dissertation ar gues that technology has the ability to
accelerate couples’ perception of time, creating a sense of escapism and engrossment in their
quality time. I ar gue that this phenomenon is another link between FTF and CMC integration and
romantic relationship closeness.
Emer ging Adulthood as a New Life Course Stage
Though marriage and childbearing used to be required benchmarks on the path to
adulthood, couples have increasingly chosen to delay and for go these life events. Over time,
economic milestones have emer ged as key signifiers of adulthood in place of marriage and
childbearing (Furstenber g et al. 2004). However , for the past few decades even these economic
milestones such as living away from one’ s parents, long term career stability , and financial
self-suf ficiency have become increasingly dif ficult to reach. This has created a new stage of life
between adolescence and adulthood, called emer ging adulthood (Furstenber g et al. 2004).
Current research shows that emer ging adulthood is a precarious time, full of exploration,
ambiguity , and liminality as young adults exist in-between many transitions in life (Arnett 2004).
2
The COVID-19 pandemic, and the consequences that followed, placed major stumbling
blocks in young adults’ path toward independence. Changes in living arrangements, quarantine,
financial hardship, and remote learning completely rocked young adults’ world (Canady 2021;
Schmidt et al. 2022). During this time, young adults had to balance their quest for independent
adulthood with their familial commitments and romantic connections. In my second dissertation
paper , I use in-depth interviews with a subsample of participants who are emer ging adults to
challenge the idea that young adults must leave their familial or romantic commitments behind to
achieve independence. Instead, they can assert independence through the r elational work of
bridging these relationships through ar gumentation, negotiation, and boundary-setting.
Income Inequality and the Negotiation of Risk
Studies have shown a dramatic increase in income inequality since the 1970’ s-80’ s, despite
previous trends of decreasing income inequality across industrialized countries (Alderson and
Neilsen 2002). T o explain this, they highlight the gains made by those at the top of the income
distribution, particularly “the working rich” (McCall and Percheski 2010; Piketty and Saez
2003). In addition, family forms beyond the biological two-parent nuclear family have increased
(McCall and Percheski 2010; W estern, Bloome, and Percheski 2008), and homogamy by
education has solidified a pattern of “diver ging destinies” for families in dif ferent SES groups
(McLanahan 2004; Schwartz and Mare 2005).
While socioeconomic status (SES) is a crucial factor in both health and economic risk, the
literature that explores how couples negotiate risk focuses less on SES. The few exceptions to
this highlight how identities like gender and SES are constructed in couples’ negotiation
processes, but leave room to explore how risk is continuously (re)constructed as well. The
pandemic is a fruitful analytical case for this, because it has exacerbated existing SES inequality
3
(Abedi et. al 2020; Bowleg 2020), and brought health and economic risk to the forefront of
romantic partners’ minds (Morris et al. 2022; W illiams, Miller , and Marquez-V elarde 2021).
In the final paper of my dissertation, I analyze the role of SES in couples’ construction and
negotiation of risk. From my interviews, I find that couples with more occupational advantages
like flexibility to work remotely , and more financial resources like income and savings, were
safer from the pandemic’ s health and economic losses. This empowered them to construct risk as
instrumental for potential economic rewards. After being shielded from health risk and using
economic risk to their advantage, these couples were able to negotiate what these next steps in
their relationship would look like, emotionally and developmentally .
Meanwhile, couples with fewer occupational advantages and less financial resources could
only negotiate how they how they would be able make ends meet, and how to safely be together
in-person while mitigating the health risk they were forced to take due to their occupations.
Based on these findings, I ar gue that (1) Occupational (dis)advantage and financial resources
impact whether couples negotiate risk under a framework of constraint or instrumentality and (2)
Cumulative (dis)advantages occur not just health-wise or economically , but also in couples’
ability to take steps forward in the development of their relationship.
Conclusion
T ogether , the three papers in this dissertation highlight the resilience and ingenuity the
pandemic’ s crisis brought out of couples. This interdisciplinary project contributes to literature in
family sociology , social psychology , and communication studies by showing how couples
re-conceptualized meanings of time, risk, and independence. Findings from this project can also
have implications for the literature on technology addiction, externalizing behaviors in young
adulthood, and cumulative (dis)advantage, as discussed in each chapter .
4
Chapter 1: Love, T ech, and T ime: Getting Cr eative During COVID
Abstract
Previous work has shown that the successful integration of face-to-face (FTF) and
computer -mediated communication (CMC) is linked to higher levels of relationship satisfaction
and closeness. While scholars have presented multiple mechanisms behind this association, one
feature of digital technology that has not been explored in this context is its ability to accelerate
time. The COVID-19 pandemic is a prime case study for this, as couples were forced to integrate
CMC and FTF quality time in new ways, in a social context of intense uncertainty . W ithin this
context, I use interviews with partners in committed relationships (N=42, 18 couples and 6
individual partners) to ask: As couples integrate FTF and digital communication in new ways,
does this impact how they perceive time together? If so, how does this time distortion impact
how they create meaning and further develop their bond? In response to the pandemic’ s
disruptions, couples integrated CMC with FTF quality time, whether they were locked down
together or forced apart. Couples spent hours on end together , integrating FTF and CMC,
describing a feeling of time “flying by”. In these hours of engrossment and escapism, couples
learned more about each other , learned how to communicate better , and (re)constructed time
together as a central priority , all of which (re)solidified their romantic bond. From this, I ar gue
that altering perceptions of time is another link between FTF/CMC integration and relationship
closeness.
Intr oduction
T echnology has undoubtedly changed the way we communicate, particularly in the world
of romance. However , evidence of technology’ s impact on dating and relationships is very
mixed. Some research highlights its positive impact, including increased access to loved ones
who are far away (Castells et al., 2006) and a wider range of potential partners for mar ginalized
commu nities with smaller dating pools (Rosenfeld 2018, Lundquist and Lin 2015). However ,
other research suggests that technological advances in dating increase choice anxiety (Giddens
1991) and facilitate superficial communication (T urkle 2015). Still other streams of research do
not ar gue a positive or negative impact. Instead, they explore how interactions in online spaces
shape and reshape meanings of gender , race (Curington, Lin, and Lundquist 2015), sexuality
(Lundquist and Lin 2015), and family (Madianou and Miller 2012).
5
Research focusing specifically on technology and relationships calls us away from
comparing computer -mediated communication (CMC) with face-to-face (FTF) interactions as if
they are “separate spheres” (Baym, Zhang, and Lin 2004). The challenge to CMC research in the
past ten years has been finding a definition that considers (1) multimodality , or the simultaneous
use of multiple channels of on and of fline communication (W alther , 201 1), and (2) the fact that
technology is increasingly involved in all of our social interactions (Y ao and Ling 2020). For this
paper , I use the definition of CMC articulated by Thurlow , Lengel, and T omic (2004, p. 15): “any
human communication achieved through, or with the help of, computer technology”. This
definition allows technology to be a facilitator of communication, rather than solely a
communication channel, which is particularly important to consider when analyzing couples’
interactions.
Romantic partners integrate CMC and FTF together in two ways: (1) by dynamically
transitioning between on and of fline quality time, and (2) using CMC when FTF with one’ s
partner . The first point asserts that rather than replacing FTF with CMC or vice versa, many
interactions between partners continue in a smooth transition between on and of fline formats
(W alther 201 1). The second point articulates what Kelly and Miller -Ott (2022) call co-pr esent
technology use , where couples use TV , cellphones, online gaming, digital text and voice chat,
and live-streaming when they are together in-person.
The integration of FTF and CMC is associated with relationship closeness (Ramirez and
Broneck 2009; Caughlin and Sharabi 2013) as romantic partners continuously create and
resolidify their bond with each other (Krotz 2014; Jiang, Bazarova, and Hancock 2013). Recent
studies have highlighted many mechanisms that link relationship closeness with FTF/CMC
integration, like bridging physical space (Su 2016), co-inclusion in digital and in-person
6
activities (Kelly and Miller -ott 2022), facilitating vulnerable conversation (Jiang et a. 2013), and
visualizing sentimental moments through photos and videos (T arnutzer et al. 2023). Each of
these mechanisms highlights a unique feature that technology brings to couples’ quality time.
Still, another feature that needs further exploration in this context is technology’ s ability to alter
peoples’ perception of time.
T ime distortion and CMC have been applied to dif ferent contexts but are less well studied
in the area of romantic intimacy . T echnology’ s impact on time perception has mainly been
explored in the context of digital addiction (Lin et al. 2015; Rau, Peng, and Y ang 2006; T urel and
Cavagnaro 2019). Studies in this area find that these technologies are used as a form of escapism,
and the many hours in these digital escapes makes time seem to fly by (Northrup and Shumway
2014). Similarly , W ajcman (2014) ar gues that technological innovation has worked alongside
social change to create a pace of life where we constantly perceive a time crunch. Because
partners’ perception of their quality time together significantly impacts their relationship
satisfaction overall (Booth et al. 1985; Gager and Sanchez 2003), the role of technology in
partners’ perception of time could be another connection between integrating FTF and CMC and
higher relationship satisfaction.
The COVID-19 pandemic provides a fruitful context to analyze this process for three
reasons. First, there is evidence that the pandemic’ s stress and uncertainty motivated couples to
resolidify their bonds in new ways (Nuru and Bruess 2021; Stanley and Markman 2020). Second,
because of stay-at-home orders forcing them apart and the temporary closure of in-person date
spots, couples have integrated more CMC into their interactions, whether they were locked down
together (Zoppolat et al. 2022) or not (Dewitte, Otten, and W alker 2020). Finally , recent research
has shown that the COVID-19 lockdowns significantly slowed down the pace of life (Fernandez
7
V elasco et al. 2022). Analyzing couples’ experiences of spending quality time during this period
allows me to test whether the accelerating ef fects of technology of fset or work alongside the
pandemic’ s uncertainty and deceleration of life at the macro-level (T orres and Gros 2022), and
how couples’ altered perceptions of time create new meaning in their relationship. T o these ends,
I ask: As couples integrate FTF and CMC during the pandemic, does this impact how they
perceive time? If so, how does this time distortion impact how they create meaning to build
intimacy and bring them closer?
Using interviews with partners in committed relationships (N=42, 18 couples and 6
individual partners) conducted in 2020 and 2021, I find that the pandemic’ s restrictions and
slower pace of life lead couples to get cr eative in their quality time. For my interviewees, getting
cr eative meant integrating CMC and FTF to have deep conversations (on and of fline) and to
translate their in-person interests into new digital formats. Whether they quarantined together or
apart, my interviewees said they were able to do this with their partner for hours, escaping the
slow , unstable, uncertain world to get lost in time together . Through this escapism and
preoccupation, couples learned more about each other , learned how to communicate better , and
(re)constructed time together as a central priority , which (re)solidified their bond.
Literatur e Review
Couples Integrate Digital and Face-to-Face Communication
Research in sociology (Barraket and Henry-W aring 2008) and communication studies
(W alther 201 1) have shown the impact of technology on romantic relationships. These scholars
generally focus on how couples combine technology with FTF interactions in dif ferent ways,
and the relationship outcomes of this process. How couples integrate FTF and digital
communication is impacted by each partners’ attachment style (Chen and Lu 2023), their
8
impression management processes (Lim et al. 2013), and their perceived function of dif ferent
communication mediums (Hertlein and Chan 2020). Media multiplexity theory posits that when
people interact through multiple mediums, they will have stronger ties because they are opening
more channels of communication between one other (Haythornthwaite 2005). Supporting this
theory , Ramirez and Broneck (2009) find couples’ relationship closeness is linked to their ability
to successfully communicate via many dif ferent mediums without conflict or
misunderstandings. The communicative inter dependence theory adds that couples’ relationship
closeness is associated with couples’ ability to not only use dif ferent forms of communication,
but also their ability to connect mediums together (Caughlin and Sharabi 2013). This stream of
research shows the dif ferent factors that af fect how couples integrate digital and FTF
interactions, and the positive relationship outcomes when they do this successfully .
Specifically , couples integrate digital and FTF interactions to maintain relationships
(Caughlin and Sharabi 2013), and to continuously solidify their romantic bond (Krotz 2014;
W eigel and Murray , 2000; Jiang and Hancock 2013) because committed relationships are
“created, maintained, and continuously reconfirmed in constant communicative interaction
(T arnutzer et al. 2023: 124). These findings demonstrate how technology is a crucial tool in the
maintenance and (re)shaping of committed relationships.
T ogether , previous research shows how couples (1) integrate FTF and digital
communication in the process of (2) creating stronger feelings of intimacy , closeness, and
satisfaction, which in turn (3) re-solidifies their romantic bond (Jiang et al. 2013). A new stream
of research (Jiang, Bazaraova, and Hancock 2013; Kelly and Miller -Ott 2022; Su 2016;
T arnutzer , Lobinger , and Lucchesi 2023) finds that to get from step one to two, couples create
meaning when they integrate FTF and digital communication, and these meanings help to
9
solidify their attachment to each other by creating feelings of closeness, intimacy , and
satisfaction.
What Happens In-Between? Couples Use T echnology and FTF Interactions to Cr eate Meaning
Scholars have posited a number of mechanisms to explain how couples’ integration of
digital and FTF interaction creates meaning, including feelings of co-presence, providing safety ,
facilitating sharing, and creating sentimental visuals. Su (2016) highlights technology’ s ability to
bridge geographic and temporal distance between couples, which increases intimacy through
feelings of co- presence. Jiang, Bazarova, and Hancock (2013) ar gue that couples strategically
choose FTF or digital communication to create safe spaces to be vulnerable with each other , and
this vulnerability is what brings them closer . Kelly and Miller -Ott (2022) focus on how couples
include each other in digital activities when they are together face-to-face, and this co-inclusion
creates intimacy . Finally , T arnutzer , Lobinger , and Lucchesi (2023) highlight the power of
digital technology to make partners visualize sentimental moments, and these moments bring
couples closer together .
One capability of digital technology that hasn’ t yet been explored in this context is its ability
to alter couples’ perception of time together (Greenfield 1999; W ajcman 2014). No matter what
technology is used, this time dilation is often associated with a sense of escapism (Northup and
Shumway 2014) and preoccupation (Lin et al. 2015), meaning that users are so caught up in the
digital world that time in-person flies by . Although we know that partners’ perception of time
spent together is linked to relationship satisfaction (Booth et al. 1985; Gager and Sanchez 2003;
White 1990), technology’ s role in shaping partners’ perception of time together remains
unexplored.
1 0
W e know that couples integrate digital and FTF communication together (Baym 2009), and
that technology can increase relationship closeness in a variety of ways (Jiang, Bazarova, and
Hancock 2013; Kelly and Miller -Ott 2022; Su 2016; T arnutzer , Lobinger , and Lucchesi 2023). It
is possible that technology’ s ability to change one’ s perception of time could be another link
between FTF and CMC integration and relationship closeness, but (1) whether FTF and CMC
integration leads to time distortion, and (2) whether this time distortion impacts couples’ feelings
of closeness, has not yet been examined empirically .
The Case of COVID-19: Uncertainty , T echnology , and the Need for Cr eativity
The COVID-19 pandemic provides a fruitful case to begin this examination. Recent
findings show uncertainty and crises from the pandemic have motivated couples to cling to one
other and strengthen their relationship in new ways (Nuru and Bruess 2021; Stanley and
Markman 2020). At the same time, in-person ways of spending quality time together were
lar gely unavailable due to stay-at-home orders, business closures, and changing living
arrangements. Therefore, many couples have had to reshape how they spend quality time, often
integrating more CMC into their relationships, alongside FTF interactions. Moreover ,
lockdowns, business closures, and the transition from in-person to online has caused many
people to perceive time as going slower or halting altogether (Fernandez V elasco et al. 2022;
T orres and Gros 2022). T ogether , the social consequences of the pandemic create an analytical
case where couples are forced to integrate digital and FTF quality time in new ways, in a social
context of intense uncertainty where the pace of life has slowed dramatically . This allows me to
ask: As couples integrate FTF and digital communication during the pandemic, does this impact
how they perceive time? If so, how does this time distortion impact how they create meaning to
build intimacy and re-solidify their bond?
1 1
T o address these questions, I analyze interviews with partners in committed relationships
(N=42, 18 couples and 6 individual partners) during the COVID-19 pandemic.
As a response to the pandemic’ s restrictions and slower pace of life, couples integrated CMC
and FTF , having deep conversations (on and of fline) and translating their in-person interests into
digital formats. Couples said they were able to do this for hours, escaping the pandemic’ s
decelerated society and making time together fly by . Through this process, couples learned more
about each other , learned to communicate better , and (re)constructed time together as a central
priority , which (re)solidified their romantic bond.
Methods
This paper highlights salient themes from in-depth interviews with romantic partners
(N=42, 18 couples and 6 romantic partners), ranging in age from 18 to 52 years old (Median =
27). T o protect the health and safety of participants, recruitment for this study included online
sampling through social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit, and newspapers (both
online and physical) throughout Los Angeles County . In two cases, couples that were
interviewed recommended other couples to participate.
The sample of interviewees only includes couples within the United States, to mitigate the
country-level variation of COVID-19 policies. In addition, I screened for couples who had been
together for at least 6 months before the time of the interviews, with participants’ length of
relationship ranging from 6 months to 30 years. This sampling strategy was meant to take the
initial challenge of partners getting to know one another out of the data, to focus on
pandemic-specific challenges. However , as themes about in-person and digital quality time
arose, I found that the current literature on this topic focused on online daters, rather than
partners already in romantic relationships. Thus, this sampling strategy also provided a novel
1 2
case to study the dif ferent models of how romantic partners use digital communication versus
in-person quality time.
Thirty out of the 42 participants (71%) were in committed relationships when they were
interviewed, ten were married (24%), and one couple (N=2) was engaged. At the time they were
interviewed, all the married partners lived with their respective spouse, and four couples in
committed relationships (N=8) were cohabiting. The rest of the participants interviewed (N=24)
did not live with their partner . These participant demographics are noted in T able 1.1 below .
Recruitment strategies drew from a technique from grounded theory called theor etical
sampling (Corbin and Strauss 1990; Strauss and Corbin 1994), where the researcher collects
data, codes it for major themes, and comes up with hypotheses underlying these themes. Based
on these theories, the researcher decides how to sample the next sets of interviews. For example,
for the first few interviews, interviewees would often talk about the use of online platforms like
social media and video games to get cr eative with dating, which led me to question whether this
was because of their age. T o test this, we changed our sources of recruitment to newspapers and
social media sites like Facebook to recruit older participants.
My research assistants and I conducted in-depth interviews, ranging from one to three
hours, with each romantic partner separately over video conferencing apps such as Facetime and
Zoom. W e asked participants what they did on dates and/or when they spent time with their
partners both before and during the pandemic, to see whether these dating habits, behaviors, and
choices changed. Periodically , due to a lack of internet access, participants requested that we
conduct interviews over the phone.
Research around using remote forms of qualitative interviewing, particularly video
conferencing apps like Zoom, is relatively new . However , findings suggest that Zoom in
1 3
particular can be beneficial in expanding recruitment to more people and making participants
feel more comfortable compared to in-person interviews (Archibald et. al 2019; Olif fe et. al
2021). Further research needs to be done to explore whether these benefits outweigh the
drawbacks such as technological glitches, and the interviewer not being able to read the full body
language of the participant like one could in person.
Interviews were conducted at dif ferent stages throughout the pandemic, as noted in T able
1.2 below . However , the major themes noted in this paper were salient in interviews regardless of
when they were conducted. For earlier participants, these meta-themes were some of the issues
most pressing for them at the time, while for later participants, these were some of the issues that
arose most often when they were asked to recount their experiences at dif ferent stages of the
pandemic. The salience of these themes across participants interviewed at dif ferent times is a
testament to their robustness (Guest, Bunce, and Johnson 2006).
Data was coded using another technique from grounded theory called the constant
comparative method (Glaser 1965; Glaser and Strauss 1967) where the researcher codes for any
major themes or patterns in participants’ responses that remain salient across participants.
Throughout this process, the researcher uses these salient themes and patterns to inform their
search in the literature for a theoretical framing. A term that many interviewees repeated was, in
their words, getting cr eative in the way they dated during the pandemic. I analyzed what getting
cr eative meant to them, and the implications of doing this for their relationship. I found that their
descriptions of getting creative often involved CMC and FTF interactions, whether they were
quarantined together or apart. The theme of time also remained closely linked to the idea of
getting creative, and as my theoretical framing took shape, I found that my participants’
1 4
experiences could be used as a case to test how CMC and FTF integration impacts how couples
perceive time, and how these perceptions af fect their relationship closeness.
T able 1.1 Interviewees’ Relationship Statuses (Percentages Rounded to the Nearest Integer)
N 18 couples + 6 partners = 42 participants
Number of Participants per
Relationship Status
Dating, Living Apart = 22 (52%)
Cohabiting = 8 (19%)
Engaged - Living Apart = 2 (5%)
Married = 10 (24%)
T able 1.2 T imeline of Interviews (Month/Y ear/Level of Restriction, CDC 2023)
Month/Y ear State of the Pandemic
(CDC Museum -
COVID-19 T imeline)
Number of Interviews
May 2020
● The US death
toll surpasses
100,000.
● Businesses,
schools, and
places of
leisure
remained
closed/remote.
● Stay-at-home
orders in place
6
June 2020
● Businesses,
schools, and
places of
leisure
remained
closed/remote.
● Stay-at-home
orders in place
6
1 5
December 2020
● Businesses,
schools, and
places of
leisure
remained
closed/remote.
● Stay-at-home
orders in place
4
January 2021
● Stay-at-home
orders lifted
● V accinations
begin
8
May 2021
● CDC
announces that
fully
vaccinated
people can
gather indoors
without masks
(March 2021)
● Restaurants,
stadiums,
museums, and
theme parks
reopened
● 62% of
Americans had
at least one
dose of the
COVID-19
vaccine
16
March 2022
● In-person
classes
resumed
● Indoor
masking
mandates lifted
2
1 6
● 65.5% of
Americans
were fully
vaccinated.
75% of
Americans had
at least one
dose.
T otal Interviews N=42
Results
Love, T ech, and T ime
Echoing existing research, (Fernandez V elasco et al. 2022; T orres and Gros 2022),
interviewees described the pandemic as a disruption to their busy schedules, which allowed them
to spend more quality time with their partner . While the pandemic allowed for more quality time,
the ways in which they used a combination of FTF and CMC during this quality time, and how it
impacted how they perceived their time together was particularly useful for this analysis.
Through the process of CMC and FTF integration, couples had long conversations, and
translated their in-person interests into new digital formats. Harkening back to findings that
digital space facilitates escapism (Ahlstrom et al. 2012; Rau, Peng, and Y ang 2006) couples said
they were so engrossed in their time together that multiple hours flew by . In these hours of
escapism, couples learned more about each other , tested their ability to communicate ef fectively ,
and reminded them how precious time with their partner was. All of these worked together to
resolve their feelings of closeness. From these findings, I ar gue that another mechanism that
links FTF and CMC integration with higher relationship closeness is technology’ s ability to
impact how partners perceive time.
FTF and CMC Integration
1 7
The pandemic disrupted my participants’ experiences in multiple ways: it increased
uncertainty and fear , closed many venues where couples previously spent quality time, which
meant that couples had to get creative with their quality time. Couples who lived together
(Zoppolat et al. 2022) and couples who were apart (Dewitte, Otten, and W alker 2020), used a
dynamic combination of FTF and CMC to do this. Couples who did not live together had to rely
on CMC completely , until they could slowly integrate FTF time together as lockdown guidelines
became more lax. These non-residential couples often translated their favorite in-person
activities to the digital space, and vice-versa when they were able to see each other in-person.
Couples who lived together integrated FTF and CMC by bringing technology into their FTF time
through co-pr esent technology use (Kelly and Miller -Ott, 2022), such as streaming movies and
TV shows while on Zoom with loved ones or playing online games together with friends.
Many participants, particularly those that quarantined separately , talked about how getting
creative involved relying on CMC a lot more. Bob, a 19-year -old student, talks about this greater
integration of CMC:
“When COVID first began, when it was really serious and we realized we're not going
back…I feel we were spending much more time virtually and in total hours
communicating, then we were in person.”
Because of the pandemic’ s restrictions on in-person meetings, couples like Bob and his
partner Christine started integrating more hours of CMC into their quality time, but many also
found that they were spending more hours total together .
During these hours of time together , many couples translated FTF activities into online
formats, helping them learn about and engage in each other ’ s interests. Joshua (24) and Daisy
(25), a couple of three years at the time they were interviewed, bonded over their love of music.
Before the pandemic, they would often go to music stores to buy vinyl records and go to concerts
1 8
together . In March of 2020, when Joshua and Daisy had to go to school remotely and did not
want to meet in person for fear of infection, they mainly spent time together virtually . Joshua
recounts:
“W e're kind of talking so much that we made an ef fort...to Skype a lot more, do video
calls...we try to find fun things to do, you know , from a distance, like we watch movies
together . W e take personality quizzes together sometimes...we kind of browse things that
kind of interest us...we made [digital music] playlists for each other….”
For the time that Joshua and Daisy had to be apart, they shifted from buying vinyl records
and attending concerts to ways of sharing their love of music from a distance. For them, this
meant making digital playlists on free phone apps like Spotify . T ranslating their love of music
into digital form made it easier for Joshua and Daisy to share their passion while they were apart.
Similarly , couples brought their favorite digital pastimes into their in-person hangouts. Jess
(24) and Nick (26), a couple who met in December 2019, spent most of their early relationship
during the pandemic’ s strictest lockdowns. Jess describes how she and Nick got creative using
video chat, and how they continued their favorite digital pastime in-person:
“When the quarantine first started, I took it very seriously…. So I was like, ‘...W e should
try to figure out a way to do things like video chats…he had told me that he liked to draw .
So we started doing drawing competitions. And we would choose whatever the topic was.
And even now [in late 2021], I’m really trying to stick to it.”
Jess and Nick’ s digital quality time included learning about each other ’ s interests, and
creating a feeling of co-presence when they quarantined apart (Su 2016). After they were able to
see each other in-person, however , Nick and Jess continued these drawing competitions as a new
tradition. This initial ef fort for Jess to enjoy Nick’ s interest with him and learn more about him
was integrated into their FTF quality time.
1 9
Couples who quarantined together integrated CMC and FTF through co-pr esent technology
use (Kelly and Miller -Ott 2022). For example, Irene, an administrative worker , talks about how
she and her husband Bruce watch TV together and with their daughters over video chat:
“W e've also started watching TV shows, together , series: Little Fir es Everywher e , it's those
little series. W e actually watch them together where we've discussed them together ,
something we've never done before…it’ s been really fun, that really has helped to bring a
sense of togetherness… They decided to do the masked singer as a group event, and they
would talk about this singer , and who they thought it was, and it was their little thing.”
Irene’ s description illustrates how co-pr esent technology use brought them closer together
not just as a couple, but allowed them to spend time with their daughters and granddaughter who
did not live with them.A 26-year -old loan consultant Gio explains how the pandemic allowed
him to appreciate these moments of co-presence, online and of fline, with his girlfriend Rachel:
“COVID kind of slowed it down…slowed everything down and made you appreciate the
smaller things in life…we could sit there and watch Hell's Kitchen or Gordon Ramsay just
yell at people or watch movies, you know , we'd love Shrek and all that. T ogether you
couldn’ t go out to eat, so we just cooked together ...so just like the small things - watching
TV together , cooking together , taking a walk or going on a little hike together . [The
pandemic] was able to make me realize all this, and it was great.”
The pandemic’ s disruption to their busy schedules lead Gio and Rachel to integrate CMC
and FTF into their quality time, and to cherish the moments they had doing this. However , an
important component of how partners got cr eative , using FTF communication and CMC, goes
beyond the activities they did. Instead, as partners integrated FTF and computer -mediated quality
time, many experienced a preoccupation and sense of escape with their partners that made hours
of the outside world fly by . I ar gue that this change in how partners perceive time is a key
mechanism behind their greater feelings of closeness as they integrated computer -mediated and
FTF quality time.
Lost in T ime: T ime Distortion, Escapism, and Engr ossment
2 0
As the partners in this study integrated CMC and FTF quality time in new ways, many of
them discussed how they spent many hours together , as if they were lost in time and solely
focused on being present with each other . Their descriptions echo the idea that engrossment in
CMC allows users to escape temporal reality , which makes time “fly by” (Lin et al. 2015; Rau,
Peng, and Y ang 2006; T urel and Cavagnaro 2019). Interestingly , their accounts of their in-person
time once lockdowns were lifted demonstrate how their greater digital communication made
them cherish their in-person quality time more, allowing them to become engrossed in their
co-presence and let the hours fly by .
Kim, a 19-year -old student, talks about how she and her partner Ron (19, student) could
Facetime for hours on end throughout the spring and summer of 2020, during the height of
COVID restrictions:
“He's just like, it's so easy to talk to him. And it's so easy to be open with him, and we can
talk about anything, and it would be okay . I mean even when we first called we talked for
10 hours on FaceT ime and I had never talked to anybody for like 10 hours straight on
FaceT ime before. So that was definitely like another big mark for me that, ‘W ow I really
like talking to this person. I really like spending time with this person,’ and stuf f like that.”
Ron was equally impressed by the hours that flew by when he Facetimed with Kim,
ar guing that their relationship deepened through these conversations:
“W e were always on FaceT ime…At least at that point, we were both like night people. The
FaceT ime started at like 9pm. It ended, I don't know , at like 7 in the morning. My dad came
downstairs to watch the news at 6am or something, and I'm just still there sitting on the
phone. It was very naturalistic, I guess, how that progression went, that growing intimacy .”
Though they had met in-person before lockdown, it was through the countless nights on
Facetime watching movies, talking, and falling asleep together that Kim and Ron developed an
intimate bond which eventually blossomed into a committed relationship. This phenomenon of
hopping online and passing half of the day without even realizing it, has been well-documented
(Lin et al. 2015; Rau, Peng, and Y ang 2006; T urel and Cavagnaro 2019). However , it is one
2 1
important component of how FTF and CMC quality time reshaped partners’ perceptions of time
together , and how this reshaping of time impacted their feelings of closeness and intimacy .
Interestingly , couples who saw each other in-person also experienced this feeling of time
“flying by”, if they only had CMC available to them during lockdown. Abby , a 26-year -old
research coordinator , talks about her first in-person dates with her partner after only
communicating via text:
“W e went on like three or four dates that were completely like socially distanced, and we
really got to know each other - they were like six hours long, seven hours long…and we
would talk, on and on and on…I remember we went on one day and we like had a
dinner/picnic or something, and then we kept talking, and then it was like 2am!”
Abby’ s description of these dates was a common experience for partners who could not
see each other in-person. Suddenly having the benefits of FTF quality time after long periods of
only communicating digitally reshaped their perception of in-person time. Bob describes this
exact feeling when he was able to see his girlfriend Christine (19) after only communicating via
text and video chat for two months:
“I think [it] came with the fact that we hadn't seen each other for a long time, because there
was that period initially where we hadn't [seen each other in-person]. So when we were
able to, there was this obligation to cherish every moment and be with each other every
possible minute.”
Bob’ s sense of obligation to spend time with Christine emphasizes the importance and
unique quality of face-to-face quality time when they could finally integrate it with CMC.
Cherishing this in-person quality time helped make couples’ time together fly by , enraptured in
their conversation until the wee hours of the morning. Therefore, technology’ s ability to make
time fly can af fect couples’ interactions both on and of fline.
T ime is All W e Have
2 2
Couples’ experiences of getting cr eative during the pandemic included a strategic mix of
digital, in-person, and hybrid quality time where partners were so engrossed in their time
together that the hours seemed to fly by . In these hours of escapism and preoccupation, couples
learned more about each other , learned to communicate better , and constructed time together as
the most valuable thing they have. In doing this, they created feelings of closeness.
Kate, a 26-year -old accountant, said that despite the horrific consequences of the pandemic,
one positive impact of getting cr eative with her husband is being able to learn more about him:
“W e'll have learned to like to take care of each other's feelings. Y ou know , when you're
together you get to know what makes me happy , what makes me unhappy , how to treat me,
how to make apologies, such small things that really matter in our relationship.”
The countless hours of vulnerable conversation both in-person and digitally , allowed couples to
not only learn more about each other , but also how to communicate better as a couple. Murphy , a
19-year -old student, talks about how the greater integration CMC into their relationship helped
them communicate better:
“It magnified how we communicated, when you're so far away you have to improve that by
1,000%. It's an interesting experience looking back at it. That was really rough finding new
ways to connect and communicate and also being able to celebrate going through
something that's really new , and it's still being figured out right now .”
Finally , because the COVID-19 pandemic created so much uncertainty , and changed how
they experienced time on and of fline, couples described time as the key commodity in their
relationships. When I asked Daisy (23, student) about how she thinks the pandemic will af fect
her relationship with Joshua (23, college graduate) long-term, she responds:
“...if anything, like make it better , and I will make this like, cherish every second that we
have, because we already experienced what it's like to live apart and see each other only
once a week…Y ou're interested [in your partner , before the pandemic] but now ...it’ s even
more because you don't know if something like this will happen again.”
2 3
According to Daisy , uncertainty of the future during COVID makes time a crucial
commodity in the relationship, but the time they spent having to get cr eative when they couldn’ t
see each other in-person deepened their bond by helping them reprioritize the time they could
spend together . Jasmin, a 46-year -old educator , describes this as a positive aspect of the
pandemic that she’ll miss:
“W e were able to also realize there's such beauty in family time. I say this almost with a
tear in my eye, that I don't know that I'll ever be able to do this again…I come to appreciate
so much of what we were able to get from the pandemic in terms of time with family , with
loved ones, time to see my kids. I don't know that I would’ve ever been able to do that...”
The COVID-19 pandemic created a unique social context of intense uncertainty where the
pace of life slowed dramatically , romantic partners suddenly had to reshape how they spent
quality time together , and many had to integrate digital communication in a much bigger way
into the rhythm of their lives. According to interviewees like Jasmin, these unique conditions of
increased intimacy and closeness is something that they will miss now that many restrictions
have been lifted.
For many interviewees, countless hours of quality time both on and of fline flew by as they
were 1. engrossed in deep conversation and 2. translating fun in-person activities online (and
vice versa). This reshaping of partners’ perception of time, even when they are in-person,
motivated them to learn more about their partners, communicate better , and cherish the time that
they spent with their loved ones. From these findings, I ar gue that changing perception of time is
another mechanism behind why integrating CMC and FTF quality time increases feelings of
relationship closeness.
Discussion
In the past few decades, the integration of digital communication with in-person quality
time has become a key factor in relationship closeness (Ramirez and Broneck 2009; Caughlin
2 4
and Sharabi 2013). Current research explores the link between relationship closeness FTF/CMC
communication and finds that technology’ s unique capabilities play a key role in this association.
For example, technology can facilitate vulnerable conversation (Jiang et a. 2013), bridge
physical distance between partners (Su 2016), help partners include one another in digital and
in-person activities (Kelly and Miller -ott 2022), and create visual sentimental moments that
partners share with each other (T arnutzer et al. 2023). Each of these mechanisms highlight a
unique feature that technology brings to couples’ quality time. In this paper , I ar gue that
technology’ s ability to alter peoples’ perception of time is another mechanism that links
FTF/CMC integration with relationship closeness.
T echnology and time distortion have been applied to dif ferent contexts, such as digital
addiction (Lin et al. 2015; Rau, Peng, and Y ang 2006; T urel and Cavagnaro 2019) and society’ s
time crunch at the macro level (W acjman 2014), but its application to romantic intimacy warrants
further exploration. Based on evidence that partners’ perception of their quality time together
impacts their view of the whole relationship (Booth et al. 1985; Gager and Sanchez 2003), there
should be further exploration of how integrating digital and FTF communication impacts the way
partners experience time together , and how this experience impacts their feelings of closeness.
The social consequences of the pandemic create an analytical case to do just that. The pandemic
made people perceive time as going slower (Fernandez V elasco et al. 2022), created intense
uncertainty , and created a need for couples to reshape their quality time and cling to each other
more (Nuru and Bruess 2021; Stanley and Markman 2020).
Using interviews with partners in committed relationships (N=42, 18 couples and 6
individual partners) conducted in 2020 and 2021, I find that the pandemic’ s conditions
motivated couples to get cr eative with their quality time by integrating CMC and FTF to
2 5
translate their in-person interests into new digital formats and become engrossed in deep
conversation. Couples said they were able to do this for hours, escaping the pandemic’ s
conditions to get lost in time together . Because of their experiences doing this during a period of
anxiety and uncertainty , couples (re)constructed their quality time together as a central priority ,
and through this process, (re)solidified their bond as a couple. Based on these findings, I ar gue
that technology’ s ability to alter perceptions of time is another mechanism that connects the
integration of FTF and CMC with relationship closeness.
Implications
Findings from this project can have multiple implications for the study of technology’ s
addictive nature. In many current theoretical applications, technology speeding up time
contributes to addiction (T urel and R. Cavagnaro 2019), leading to compulsive technology use
and functional impairment in other aspects of life (Lin et al. 2015), and frustration within one’ s
romantic relationship (Ahlstrom et al. 2012; Northrup and Shumway 2014). However , the
implications of time acceleration goes beyond the technology itself, because it shapes and is
shaped by social relationships. As W acjman says, “T emporal demands are not inherent to
technology . They are built into our devices by all-too- human schemes and desires” (2014:3).
Building on this idea, this paper provides a uniquely positive perspective on technology and time
acceleration, suggesting that technology’ s time accelerating ef fects can actually deepen and
strengthen relationships.
This relational component to technology addiction, alongside temporal acceleration,
suggests that part of technology’ s addictive nature are the online relationships that are created
when people log on. In other words, it is important to distinguish whether someone is addicted to
the game, app, or website itself, or addicted to the relationships present within these spaces. This
2 6
calls for further exploration into the nature of the relationships created by people who are
addicted to technology use, and how these relationships could impact (un)healthy uses of
technology .
Secondly , when technology is addictive and one-sided, time acceleration works against a
couple, which has often been studied with video game addiction (Northrup and Shumway 2014;
Ahlstrom et al. 2012; Hertlein and Hawkins 2015). When one partner is “lost in time” and the
other partner is left behind, this creates distance, resentment, and a lack of emotional intimacy
(Northrup and Shumway 2014). Moreover , the partner struggling with video game addiction can
start seeing it as a job, rather than fun (Y ee 2006). This paper provides a hopeful future for
professionals to work toward with their clients: encouraging healthy levels of CMC and FTF
integration that creates co-inclusion and co-presence. If couples can do this successfully , they
may also experience the positive ef fects of being lost in time together . This could, in turn, impact
how the couple perceives, prioritizes, and experiences their quality time. According to this
paper ’ s findings, this would help the couple nurture and (re)strengthen feelings of intimacy of
closeness.
Limitations
There are, however , a few major limitations to this study , the first being the selection
schema for this study . Only interviewing couples who have been together for at least 6 months
means that themes of resilience and strengthening bonds were likely to arise, compared to studies
that included couples that broke up. I would suspect that some couples who ended their
relationship during the pandemic could have done so because of boredom or a feeling of
stagnation in their relationship or in the pace of life in general. It is also possible that couples
who broke up during the pandemic were not able to find a way to integrate CMC and FTF
2 7
quality time in a way that works for both of them, as some partners expect and emotionally
require more frequent communication than others (Chen and Lu 2023).
Secondly , there are likely dif ferences in experience among cohabiting, directly married, and
couples living apart that could not be fully captured in this paper . For example, couples who
suddenly had to quarantine together have to figure out ways of spending quality time together
in-person with less pre-COVID precedent than couples who have been married and living
together for years. Though preliminary evidence (T sang, A very , and Duncan 2023) shows that
being in any romantic relationship, rather than the structure of that relationship, has a stronger
association with partners’ level of satisfaction during the pandemic, these dif ferent structures
could have had an impact on how couples integrated CMC and FTF in dif ferent ways.
For example, the experience of integrating FTF and CMC is by nature dif ferent for couples
who were together in-person every day during the pandemic, and couples who were forced apart.
Couples who were together in-person were more likely to integrate FTF and CMC co-pr esent
technology use (Kelly and Miller -Ott 2022), which is a dif ferent experience than couples who
had to quarantine apart and use CMC as their primary channel of communication.
While I ar gue that the experience of time distortion and escapism is similar across couples
who did and did not live together during the pandemic, I would hypothesize that comparing the
two groups would reveal slightly dif ferent consequences of this time distortion: Couples who
were apart could enjoy the hours “flying by” because they were able to temporarily escape their
separation and experience co-presence (Su 2016). Meanwhile, couples who were together
possibly enjoyed the time distortion and escapism to stave of f monotony and boredom. Future
research comparing these two dif ferent groups would provide more contextual specificity and
2 8
nuance to the connection I am drawing between FTF and CMC integration, time distortion and
escapism, and feelings of closeness.
2 9
Chapter 2: I’m a Big Kid Now? Y oung Adults Linking Independent Identity , Romantic
Commitment, and Familial Responsibility
Abstract
Previous work on emer ging adulthood has shown young adults’ competing commitments
from parents or romantic relationships. The literature on emer ging adulthood conceptualizes
independence in many dif ferent ways, and the majority of studies focus on a single type of
relationship (ie. familial or romantic), even though young adults are embedded in all of these
relationships simultaneously . Analyzing how young adults simultaneously navigated the role of
independent adult, responsible family member , and committed partner during the COVID-19
pandemic provides a fruitful case to study this theoretical puzzle, because the pandemic’ s fallout
highlighted and exacerbated the precarious balance of these three roles. Using in-depth
interviews with young adult romantic partners (N=30, 14 couples + 2 partners), I challenge the
idea that young adults leave parents or partners behind in the process of forming their
independent selves. Instead, I ar gue that the dif ficult r elational work of bridging their familial
and romantic lives through ar guments, negotiation, and boundary-setting is another way to
conceptualize young adults’ independence.
Intr oduction
Y oung adulthood is a period full of transitions (Furstenber g et al. 2004), which can create
feelings of ambivalence (Arnett 2004) and being in-between as they step into new social roles
(Furlong et al. 2017). This “limbo” that young adults experience makes this stage of the life
course dif ficult to theoretically define, but emer ging adulthood has become the standard concept
to describe this developmental stage (Arnett 2000; 2004). Emer ging adulthood tends to be
defined in the literature as the stage of life from the late teens through the twenties, characterized
by ambiguity and exploration as people make the transition from school to career , dependence on
parents to self-suf ficiency , and the search for a long-term romantic partner (Arnett 2004). In the
midst of this ambiguity , emer ging adults strive to achieve culturally-specific markers of
independence, which, currently in the United States, are things like financial self-suf ficiency ,
living separately from parents, having a long-term career , and home ownership (Furstenber g
3 0
2004). However , what independence means varies theoretically depending on the focus of the
literature.
The literature surrounding young adults’ relationship with their parents conceives of
independence as autonomy , and ar gues that autonomy is a key element that young adults have to
re-negotiate in their deeply embedded relationship with their parents. As young adults get older ,
they have to re-negotiate their role in the family and the rules that their parents place on them
(Sassler , Ciambrone, and Benway 2008). This process is especially dif ficult if disruptions (i.e.
financial instability , relationship dissolution, and precarity in entry-level jobs) keep them
dependent on their parents financially or for a place to stay (Caputo 2019), which typically gives
parents more authority to say what their young adult children can and cannot do. While this
literature discusses young adults’ decisions, independence, and autonomy in their relationships
with their parents, it also draws on theory that highlights young adults’ deep, continued
embeddedness in their families of origin.
Drawing from the life course perspective , the theory of linked lives ar gues that peoples’
life paths are linked with those around them and situated in a particular socio-historical moment
(Elder 1994). The concept of linked lives has been useful in studying the ways that peoples’ life
paths and decisions have ripple ef fects across generations (Elder 1985; Bucx 2009). Consistent
with this theory , research shows that the quality of parents’ relationship with their young adult
children is deeply connected to the quality of their relationship in the past. As young adults
transition into adulthood, they must re-negotiate this relationship financially , and in terms of
living arrangements, rules, and roles. What is less emphasized in this literature, however , are the
outside relationships that can impact the renegotiation of the parent-child dynamic (Gilligan et
3 1
al., 2018). For example, less work has been done on how children are embedded within a
network that includes their parents as well as their romantic partners, and their partner ’ s family .
The projects that do focus on young adults’ romantic partnerships draw from a
developmental perspective. The literature on young adults’ relationships emphasizes the
precarity and exploration unique to this stage of life (Armstrong, England, and Fogarty 2012;
Halpern-Meekin et al. 2013). However , committed relationships leading to marriage remain
extremely sought-after (Sassler 2010). One theory underlying this thread of research, r omantic
stage theory , focuses on how young adults navigate their own lives while balancing their quest
for long-term romance. It states that young adults in relationships must make decisions (i.e.
where they will live, what job they will have, and where/whether they will go to college) while
considering their partner ’ s needs and goals (Levinson 1978). This literature echoes the
connection and embeddedness highlighted in young adults’ relationship with their parents, but it
focuses on young adults and their partners starting a household of their own, meaning that
independence is conceived in this literature as separation from parental influence (Kusunoki and
Barber 2020).
These two dif ferent literatures show how young adults balance the path to independence
with either their deep familial commitments or their romantic connections, but young adults are
embedded in all of these roles simultaneously . The few works that do bring young adults’ role as
romantic partners in conversation with their familial responsibilities show how they leave their
familial life behind to pursue an independent life with their partner (Rosenfeld and Kim 2005),
move back in with their families when a romantic relationship ends (Gitelson and McDermott
2006), or hooking up to avoid romantic commitment in order to prioritize finding one’ s own
individual identity (Fielder and Carey 2010). From these works, it seems as if independence
3 2
means having to make a choice to separate from either one’ s family of origin or one’ s romantic
partner .
All together , the majority of the literature on young adulthood has multiple dif ferent
conceptions of independence, and either focus on young adults’ relationship to their parents or
their partners, even though they exist at the intersection of these relationships at the same time.
Analyzing how young adults navigate their role as a family member , romantic partner , and
independent adult simultaneously allows me to capture this reality more comprehensively , and
allows me to reconcile the dif ferent conceptions of independence within the emer ging adulthood
literature.
Y oung adults’ lives and relationships during the COVID-19 pandemic is a useful case for
exploring how young adults balance the creation of independent adulthood in the midst of the
“linked lives” of family members and romantic partners. The COVID-19 pandemic changed
many young adults’ living arrangements, closed their schools, placed financial strain on
themselves and their families. Since the pandemic began, more than one-third of surveyed young
adults said that they struggled with making day-to-day and major life decisions (Canady 2021).
The pandemic’ s disruption highlighted the tension between independence and embeddedness
with family and partners that young adults have always faced, providing a fruitful case study to
explore how young adults navigate these dif ferent roles simultaneously .
T o this end, this paper asks: How do the roles of independent young adult, romantic
partner , and family member interact with one another during this uniquely precarious moment in
history? I use in-depth interviews with young adult romantic partners (N=30, 15 couples) to
address these questions. I first show how this tumultuous time has made the tension between the
role of responsible family member , committed partner , and independent adult more acute and
3 3
visible. Then, by highlighting young adult couples’ experiences in the pandemic, I challenge the
idea that asserting independence in young adulthood means separation from parents or romantic
partners. Instead, I ar gue that the active r elational work of mer ging their familial and romantic
lives is one way young adults assert their independence.
Emerging Adulthood
Y oung adulthood is a period of many transitions: moving away from familial households,
finishing school, and starting a family have all been traditional ideals for this life stage (Arnett
2000). It is also a liminal stage in the life course, where young adults are beginning to step into
new social roles in many dif ferent aspects of their lives, but without guaranteed permanence,
belonging, or definite identity (Furlong 2017). Family sociologists have long associated the
transition to adulthood with identity formation, instability , and exploration (Kusunoki and Barber
2020). The life course perspective is a fundamental theoretical lens in analyzing stages of life
like the transition to adulthood.
This theoretical lens ar gues that societal forces, past and present, shape peoples’
decisions along their life paths (Elder 1998). Researchers have used the life course perspective to
examine the changing cultural meanings of adulthood. They ar gue that traditional markers like
marriage and childbearing are being replaced by economic milestones such as full-time
employment, financial independence, and buying a home. As a result of the changing economy ,
these milestones take longer to reach, creating a new life course stage between adolescence and
adulthood called emer ging adulthood (Furstenber g et al. 2004).
In the United States, emer ging adulthood is associated with high levels of unemployment
(Cook and Furstenber g 2002), with parents often providing financial and housing support
(Swartz 2009). Research finds that young adults in this life stage are just as likely to want a
3 4
committed romantic relationship as older age groups, but often lack the financial resources or
employment stability that they think is necessary to move out of their parents’ homes and form
households of their own (Schulman and Connelly 2013). The research shows that emer ging
adults exist in transitory phases between multiple social roles, where they experience ambiguity
(Arnett 2004) and liminality (Cuervo et al. 2023).
Y oung Adults and their Par ents
A subsection of the emer ging adulthood literature highlights the changing relationship
between parents and young adult children, and conceives of independence as greater autonomy
in this changing relationship. As adolescents step into young adulthood, familial relationships are
sources of both support and stress (Aquilino 2006). While research indicates that parent-child
relationships tend to have less conflict during this stage, young adults also perceive less
communication and af fection from their parents (Parra, Oliva, and Reina 2015). Co-residence
(Dubas and Petersen 2006) and the quality of the parent-child relationship in younger
adolescence (Rossi and Rossi 1990) both greatly af fect how close young adults feel to their
parents. In any circumstance, relationships with family members is a key factor that shapes
newly-forming adult identities (Lambert et al. 2010).
Y oung adults’ decision of whether and when to move out of parents’ homes is a
cost-benefit analysis af fected by many factors, including their perception of the current housing
market and how they anticipate their parents will react to them leaving (Billari and Liefbroer
2007). But like many processes in this life stage, separate living can be temporary , with young
adults leaving and returning periodically multiple times (Caputo 2019).
The process of moving back in with parents is often prompted by negative life
disruptions, from a relationship breakup to a nationwide economic crisis. No matter the reason,
3 5
moving back home can negatively impact the parent-child relationship and young adults’
self-esteem (Caputo 2019; Gitelson and McDermott 2006). Many experience a loss of autonomy
and struggle to renegotiate a relationship with their parents as adults, while their parents still see
them as children (Sassler , Ciambrone, and Benway 2008). Through this renegotiation of
autonomy , the young adults’ familial relationships heavily influence how young adults view their
own sense of independence. On the one hand, this literature highlights the ambiguous, sometimes
dif ficult, changing relationship between parents and their young adult children. On the other , it
shows that young adults remain deeply embedded in this relationship
Much of the literature on parents and young adult children draws on the theory of linked
lives, asserting that the decisions and life trajectories of parents are crucial to the life trajectories
of children (Conger and Elder 1994). This theoretical lens is often used to analyze how parents’
social positions af fect childrens’ adult outcomes, or how parents’ and childrens’ decisions shape
the relationship dynamic (Barr et al. 2018; Cook and Furstenber g 2002). More recent literature,
however , is calling for theory that extends beyond the parent-child relationship, to include
grandparents and step-families (Aquilino 2006; Gilligan, Karraker , and Jasper 2018), as well as
friends and romantic partners (van de Bongardt et al. 2015) in young adults’ network of linked
lives.
Y oung Adult Couples
Research on young adult couples ar gues that romantic intimacy becomes an increasingly
important form of social support as young adults begin to separate from their parents (Kusunoki
and Barber 2020). As a whole, the literature on romantic relationships for young adults points to
themes of exploration and precarity , while refuting the idea that these relationships are fleeting or
frivolous (Sassler 2010). Some research suggests that because marriage and childbearing
3 6
continues to be delayed, many young adults hook up (Armstrong, England, and Fogarty 2012)
and enter on-and-of f again relationships, a practice known as r elationship churning
(Halpern-Meekin et al. 2013). These findings highlight the precarity of young adult relationships
as they form their identities and expectations for future partners, while other research shows their
desire and attempts to form long-term, committed relationships.
A committed relationship eventually leading to marriage is a highly-desired, but lofty
goal during the transition to adulthood (Sassler 2010; Shulman and Connolly 2013). In the
meantime, for more than fifty percent of young adults, cohabitation can be a key mechanism to
navigate committed relationships (Sassler 2004; Stanley , Rhoades, and Fincham 2010). While
young adult cohabitors don’ t see marriage on the table until certain financial milestones are met
(Smock, Manning, and Porter 2005), recent cohorts see cohabitation as a way to test out a
couples’ compatibility for long-term partnership (Sassler 2010).
The research on young adults’ romantic relationships often draws from developmental
models. Like the life course perspective , developmental models lay out the dif ferent experiences
and crossroads people face throughout dif ferent stages of their lives. In doing so, they highlight
the many age-specific decisions that young adults face (Levinson et al. 1978). One example,
called r omantic stage theory , ar gues that while young adults navigate these age-specific
decisions, they must reconcile their personal goals with commitments to their romantic partners
(Shulman and Connolly 2013). This shows how young adults navigate their independent lives
while simultaneously honoring their commitments to their romantic partners. In this stream of
scholarship, parents are not the focus, with the assumption that young adults are leaving their
parents’ influence in order to explore themselves and their future possibilities for partnership
(Arnett 2004).
3 7
Partners and Par ents: Does Independence Equal Distance?
Few studies bring young adults’ quest for independence together with their
responsibilities to their romantic partner and their families all at the same time. The research that
does intersect partners with parents conceive of independence as making a choice between one
commitment or the other (Gitelson and McDermott 2006; Rosenfeld and Kim 2005). For
example, hookups provide a compromise between experiencing intimacy and maintaining
independence from romantic commitment when parents prohibit their children from dating
(Fielder and Carey 2010) or when young adults want to focus on their career (Hamilton and
Armstrong 2009). On the other hand, Rosenfeld and Kim (2005) link the rise of interracial and
same-sex unions among young adults to the emer gence of the independent life stage , where
young adults have moved away from the influence of their families and communities of origin.
These dif ferent streams of literature highlight dif ferent conceptions of emer ging
adulthood : either of separation from families and partners, or embeddedness and connection in
these relationships. In addition, the emer ging adulthood literature of fers dif ferent meanings of
independence, as socially constructed milestones, as autonomy , or as separation from family
and/or romantic commitment. In order to reconcile these dif fering images of young adult life,
scholars need an analytical case where young adults are simultaneously trying to create an
independent adult identity , while juggling expectations of being a responsible family member
and committed romantic partner . The COVID-19 pandemic—and the intensification of relational
work that it generated—of fers a propitious opportunity to analyze how all of these roles interact
with each other , as it has made young adults’ management of all of these roles more visible and
straining.
COVID-19: Role Conflict and the Rise of Relational W ork
3 8
The COVID-19 pandemic and its repercussions spotlight the many decisions that young
adults face, and the toll that young adults have shouldered for the past two years (Schmidt et al.
2021; Shanahan et al. 2020; Simone et al. 2020). The rapid changes in living arrangements, the
transition to remote work and learning, the social isolation of quarantine, all place young adults
in new positions of instability , stress, and responsibilities. While the percentage of young adults
living with their parents has increased steadily since 1950, disruptions due to the COVID-19
pandemic have raised this rate higher than rates seen during the Great Depression (Fry et al.
2020). Since the pandemic began, more than one-third of young adults sampled said that they
struggled with making both day-to-day and major life decisions (Canady 2021). This
unprecedented historical moment highlights and exacerbates the tension young adults face when
they make decisions, as they balance their quest for independence with their commitments to
their families and partners.
In this paper , I use in-depth interviews with young adult romantic partners (N=30, 15
couples) to show that this tumultuous time has made the tension between the role of responsible
family member , committed partner , and independent adult more acute and visible. By
highlighting young adult couples’ experiences in the pandemic, I challenge the idea that asserting
independence in young adulthood always means putting distance between oneself, parents, and
romantic partners. Instead, I ar gue that the r elational work of mer ging these relationships is a
way of asserting independence.
Methods
This paper is part of a lar ger project studying romantic relationships in the wake of the
COVID-19 pandemic, consisting of 42 interviews with romantic partners. It draws data from a
subsample of interviews from participants ages 18-30 (N=30, 14 couples + 2 participants whose
3 9
partners did not participate). Though their age need not necessarily classify them as emer ging
adults , participants picked for this sample are at some of the transition points indicative of this
life course stage (Furstenber g 2004): they are at the start of their college and/or professional
journeys, and at dif ferent stages of leaving their familial homes. About half of the participants in
this subsample (N=14) are currently in college, and twelve out of the thirty participants discussed
moving back into their familial homes because of the pandemic. At least three couples (N=6) had
concrete plans to move out of their families’ homes to cohabit in the months following their
interviews, while thirteen of the fourteen college students planned to return to on-campus
housing when their administration allowed it. Demographic data for this subsample are presented
in T able 2.1. All of the participants in this subsample occupy at least one of the areas of “limbo”
highlighted in the emer ging adulthood literatur e : education, career path, where to live, or
independence from families of origin (Arnett 2004).
During the recruitment process, the research team screened for couples who had been
together for at least six months before the time of the interviews. Though there is bur geoning
research exploring early stages of dating during the pandemic, particularly online (W illiams et
al., 2021), collecting data from couples who have been together longer takes the initial
challenges of partners getting to know one another out of the findings.
T o protect the health and safety of participants, recruitment for this study included online
sampling through social media sites (i.e. Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit) and newspaper
advertisements throughout Los Angeles County . The recruitment strategy drew from a concept in
grounded theory called theor etical sampling (Strauss and Corbin 1990; 1994), where the
researcher collects data, codes it for major themes, and comes up with hypotheses underlying
these themes. Based on these hypotheses, the researcher decides how to sample the next sets of
4 0
interviews. For example, the research team wanted to test if independence from parents was
something unique to couples who were in their early twenties or still in college, so we made an
ef fort to recruit adults later in their twenties and early thirties, who had completed their
educational goals and began their careers.
My research assistants and I conducted in-depth interviews, ranging from one to three
hours, with each romantic partner separately over the videoconferencing app Zoom. In using
Zoom interviewing, researchers must concede that technical issues and less body language cues
could af fect data collection. However , some work suggests that it can also cast a wider
recruitment net, be more flexible to participants’ schedules, and make participants more
comfortable sharing personal information (Archibald et. al 2019; Olif fe et. al 2021). Further
research needs to be done in order to explore whether these benefits outweigh the disadvantages
of using videoconferencing for qualitative interviews.
After interviews were recorded and transcribed, the research team implemented the
constant comparative method (Glaser 1965; Glaser and Strauss 1967) where the researcher codes
for themes and patterns that remain salient across multiple interviews. These patterns could be
similarities or dif ferences in responses, experiences, descriptions, or meanings. This
constant-comparative process continues until the only themes and patterns that are included in
the paper are those that have been salient across multiple participants.
As interviews continue, the researcher dives into the literature, connecting these
meta-themes to theory . In this subsample of data, I found that the balance young adults faced in
asserting their independence while being responsible family members and committed romantic
partners required elements of both linked lives and r omantic stage theory . The experiences of
these young adults as they navigated the COVID-19 pandemic, integrating these three identities,
4 1
provide a fruitful case study to understand how young adults navigate their familial and romantic
commitments while struggling to assert their independence.
T able 2.1. Interviewees’ Demographic Data (Percentages Rounded to the Nearest Integer)
N 15 couples + 2 partners = 30 participants
Age Range = 18-30, Median = 23
Participants’ Living Situations Dating, Living Apart = 22 (73%)
● Dating, Living Apart with Parents =
19 (63%)
Living with Only Partner = 4 (13%)
Living with Partner and Family = 4 (13%)
Occupational Status Student Full-T ime = 3 (10%)
W orking While in School = 1 1 (37%)
W orking Full-T ime = 16 (53%)
Results
Identity , Love, and Family
Y oung adult participants described how important it was to them to form independent
identities while maintaining their responsibilities to both romantic partners and families.
However , pandemic conditions made the dif ficulty of managing these three roles simultaneously
more acute and visible. At initial stages of COVID-19 lockdown, almost all interviewees
described frustration and tension as they navigated the many responsibilities associated with
these roles. One of the key tensions that arose were disagreements in how to practice COVID
safety , particularly in seeing one’ s partner in-person. However , what remained salient across
interviews were the ways that young adults in this sample engaged r elational work of bridging
their familial and romantic lives. Collectively , their experiences serve as a case study that
contributes a new conception of independence: rather than leaving familial responsibility or
romantic commitment behind in the process of forming their independent selves, young adults
4 2
constructed and asserted independence by bridging together the deep connections with their
partners and families.
V iviana Zelizer (2007) famously conceptualized r elational work , explaining, “people
create connected lives by dif ferentiating their multiple social ties from each other , marking
boundaries between those dif ferent ties by means of everyday practices, sustaining those ties
through joint activities, but constantly negotiating the exact content of important social ties”
(32). From my interviews with young adults during the pandemic, Zelizer ’ s r elational work is
very much at-play , with slight dif ferences. Through these processes of boundary-setting and
negotiation, as well as ar gumentation, young adults may dif ferentiate their social ties to their
families and romantic partners, but they are bridging these deep connections at the same time.
From this finding, I ar gue that bridging these relationships through r elational work is another
way to conceive of independence for emer ging adults.
The T ension
A bur geoning literature highlights the toll that young adults have shouldered as a result of
the pandemic’ s fallout (Schmidt et al. 2021; Shanahan et al. 2020; Simone et al. 2020). The
pandemic’ s sweeping ef fects bring to the forefront young adults’ struggle to balance their role as
an independent adult, committed partner , and responsible family member . Mara, a 25-year -old
call center employee, describes the emotional struggle in forming an identity separate from her
partner and family that many participants experienced during COVID:
“All of our lives changed at the same time…I got promoted, and the day I was supposed
to start is the day they closed down the corporate of fice…it’ s related to my sudden loss of
friendships, my loss of stability , and I’m living here with two other adults and my kid …
[working together to run the household] is a joint ef fort. I have to be independent without
being allowed to be independent.”
4 3
The pandemic’ s sudden changes in occupational conditions, living arrangements, and
school disrupted many adults’ ef forts to reach the cultural milestones of independence, as Mara
describes in being laid of f from her job. Her experience captures how visible and high-stakes the
tension was between the quest for independence and one’ s familial commitment. This tension
was visible for couples who quarantined together , like Mara with her partner Syd, and couples
who were separately quarantining in their family’ s homes. Roger , a 30-year -old software,
engineer , explains his initial dif ficulties in working from home while living with his parents:
“...we had ar guments. I was like, dude, I'm in a meeting. So they kind of understood it
like, a month in, and it was like, ‘If this door's closed, don't make noise, or make it
somewhere else.’ So it's gotten a lot better . But yeah, my parents would come in and be
like, ‘Hey , do you want to do this?’ And I'm like, ‘I'm in a meeting.’ So, just…dividing
out like, ‘I'm working, this is work,’ and then, ‘I'm home’.
For Roger and his family , separating work and home was connected to the separation he
had to make between “his” time and “family time”. Hazel (26, data analyst), Roger ’ s girlfriend,
weighs in on how this dynamic between Roger and his family also af fected their relationship:
“I think our biggest issue is…his parents being very much a significant part of his life,
which makes sense, but I think it controls more than I felt comfortable with or was used
to. He still lives at home so…obviously , abiding to the rules of…you're still living with
your parents, you have to be home at a certain time. Whereas I live alone, so I don't have
that I don't have to check in with anyone.”
Roger and Hazel struggled with juggling the dif ferences between their familial
responsibilities and expectations. W ith Roger already frustrated in separating his work life and
his home life, Hazel’ s unfamiliarity with this dynamic also impacted the dynamics of their
relationship. Roger and Hazel’ s accounts vocalize the ways that the pandemic brought the
tension between young adults’ familial, romantic, and individual lives to the forefront.
Despite these frustrations, the young adults we interviewed expressed that bridging their
romantic and familial commitments simultaneously was something very important to them. Their
4 4
experiences provide an inverse of pre-pandemic research, that shows young adults clinging to
their romantic partners when they set out independently , away from their parents (Kusunoki and
Barber 2020). In the wake of this tension between their independent, familial, and romantic lives,
the majority of my participants emphasized their goal to bridge their romantic and familial lives
together , even if this process was dif ficult.
For example, 20-year -old photographer Ron recounts how challenging it was to transition
from living on-campus in college to living with his parents again, and bringing his new partner
Kim into this tense dynamic:
“The move back home was a very jarring experience…I just ended up ar guing with my
parents a lot…then I had to mer ge the Kim part of my life with…the family part of my
life. Since I was living at home, and she was coming up here, that was something that I
was gonna have to…crossover for that to work.”
In 2020, fifty-two percent of young adults like Ron began living with their parents due to
pandemic disruptions, a rate not seen since the Great Depression (Fry , Passel, and Cohn 2020).
Echoing pre-pandemic studies of young adults who move back in with their parents, interviewees
in this study initially felt a sense of stagnation and lack of autonomy (Sassler , Ciambrone, and
Benway 2008). Those that moved back in with their parents expressed a step further than
stagnation, describing a regression back to younger stages of their life. Murphy , a 21-year -old
theater student and curriculum developer , describes this frustration as he was forced to cancel
rehearsals for an upcoming college play and move back to his parents’ home:
“I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, like, I feel like I'm in high school!’ and I love my family , but
just being around my parents, they're so overbearing…like they're not trying to take away
your autonomy , but sometimes some of the actions they do are…kind of trying to
undermine that. So yeah, it was pretty rough…getting used to that and kind of having to
adjust to things like online acting, [online] learning, balancing work, and also my
relationship [all from] my childhood bedroom.”
The pandemic’ s disruptions to Murphy and Ron’ s college experience made visible the
4 5
tension between their multiple roles, but finding a balance between their romantic lives, familial
lives, and their independent identities was crucial for them. The process of doing this, however ,
was full of challenges.
One of the major considerations when striking this balance was the health and safety of
loved ones, while trying to maintain emotional attachments by seeing romantic partners
in-person. When V eronica, a 19-year -old student, wanted to meet her partner Drew in person, she
invited him over to her family’ s house. However , she wanted to keep Drew outside while her
family was gathering inside the house. She says:
“My family was inside, but I didn’ t want to let him inside, because you know , because of
the coronavirus and everything…but he ended up going inside anyways because my
family said he could. And they were wondering where I was” *laughs*.
Initially , V eronica made the decision that in order to see Drew without infecting her
family , she stayed with him outside, away from them. Her family made it easy to bridge her
familial and romantic commitments, however , when they let Drew come in and spend time with
them. This process of families inviting and integrating children’ s romantic partners into the
family can go unnoticed when research only focuses on the parent-child or romantic partner
relationship (van de Bongardt et al. 2015).
As family members are engaged in this process, partners are also considering the
wellbeing of their partners’ family members as part of the romantic commitment. When we
asked Drew (19, retail employee), about why he hesitated to see V eronica in-person during
lockdown, he responded:
“That's definitely a worry for sure because you know you don't want to be the reason why
their family is sick because…that's going to be…a major red flag for the family…I’m
constantly worrying about…getting her family sick or something like that. I really don't
want to be that person.”
As Drew chose how often he saw his partner , he had to balance his romantic commitment
4 6
with his responsibility to her family . As Drew decided whether , and how often, to see V eronica
in-person, he saw this familial responsibility as an extension of his romantic commitment to
V eronica. The bridging and integrating process was not always so simple, however: according to
our participants, bridging one’ s romantic and familial life was full of ar guments, negotiation, and
boundary-setting.
Building the Bridge: Ar guing, Negotiation, and Boundary-Setting
As young adults mer ged their individual, familial, and romantic commitments, there were
often conflicts between the expectations of these roles. In response, participants ar gued, set
boundaries, and negotiated with their loved ones to assert their needs and desires to make this
balance work. In the midst of all the autonomy and possibilities that the pandemic took away , I
ar gue that this process is a fundamental way that young adults asserted independence.
Sometimes, the tension between these roles grew so great that it caused ar guments with
both partners and parents. Jackson (20, student) and his partner Kate (18, student) both recount a
dif ficult time in their relationship, when Kate’ s parents didn’ t allow them to meet in-person.
Jackson recounts how this caused conflict within the relationship:
“I think looking back, I wanted to see her more often in-person and call less…And I
would say , ‘Can you please ask your parents?’ And she’d say , ‘No I don't want to.’…I
was being selfish for sure but I just didn't understand why her parents wouldn't even -
would get angry at her for asking…I was upset that I couldn't see her more.”
In the midst of competing expectations from her partner and her parents, Kate felt that, at
first, it was easier to ar gue with her partner . She told us, “I'm really bad about taking initiative
against my parents, culturally…I don't want to be disrespectful or anything like that.” Eventually ,
however , she ar gued with her parents in order to find a compromise, where she could see Jackson
while respecting their wishes.
“And that's where I ar gued, and I started being like, ‘Okay , if I...if you guys are able to go
4 7
out and go shopping and do whatever , why can't I also just go out and see him a little bit
more like, once a week?’ And so like I ar gued my point then it got through to my parents.
It got to the point where I was like, “Okay , well, [it’ s about] my own mental health as
well.”
Kate’ s experience has been all-too-common since 2020: disruptions caused by the
COVID-19 pandemic have taken an intense toll on young adults’ mental health (Schmidt et al.
2021; Shanahan et al. 2020; Simone et al. 2020). In the midst of competing expectations, Kate
advocated for herself to fulfill these personal and romantic needs while honoring her parents’
concerns. Her experience is one example of how bridging these competing roles is a way to
assert autonomy and independence. This means that independence can mean greater
interconnectedness in one’ s network of linked lives, rather than separation from relationships
within that network.
Negotiation was another strategy young adults used to balance their multiple roles. Daisy ,
a 22-year -old college student, recounts how she negotiated with her partner Joshua when
lockdown of ficially ended, and he wanted to spend time with his friends in-person:
“...I just told him, ‘Stay strong. Y ou should be doing this for your own good and for your
family , regardless of what everybody else is doing. And if you want to see me then you
really can’ t go out and stuf f because that puts me at risk and my family at risk.’ So
basically I’m saying, ‘Don’ t go out. If you go out you won't see me for a longer period of
time.’
Daisy made it clear throughout her interview how important it was that she maintained a
strong bond with her partner Joshua while not getting her family sick with COVID-19. In her
ultimatum with Joshua, she called on his responsibility to himself and his family , as well as his
responsibility to her and her family because he is her partner . In this, Daisy advocated for her and
her families’ needs while keeping up her romantic commitment to Joshua by spending time with
him in-person despite her caution.
4 8
Even when separation did occur , young adults saw this as an opportunity to increase their
connection rather than sever it or leave it behind in favor of independence. Christine’ s partner
Bob, a 19-year -old student, recounts how they initially balanced their romantic and familial
commitments by cherishing every single moment that their parents allowed them together .
However , this started to constrain Bob’ s alone time when both sets of parents ‘allowed’ him and
Christine to spend more time together . He explains:
“...now it's more laxed even though we still enjoy each other's company and stuf f like
that. Y ou don't feel obligated to necessarily squeeze literally every minute of our time
together . W e were invested in things and able to grow independently , as well as be able to
have a relationship.”
Bob and Christine made the decision as a couple to allow each other space to grow in the
relationship and as independent people echoing r omantic stage theory’ s picture of how young
adults balance their romantic commitments and independent identities (Shulman and Connolly
2013). Christine and Bob asserted independence to grow more deeply connected in their
relationship, all while integrating and following familial expectations.
Though bridging romantic, familial, and individual responsibilities can lead to tension
with loved ones, it paints a very dif ferent picture of young adult independence. Through this
dif ficult process, young adults are asserting independence by advocating for their own wants and
needs in ar guments, negotiations, and boundary-setting with both their parents and partners.
Discussion
This paper situates young adults in a historical moment of stress and uncertainty , when
their daily routines, social lives, and transition to adulthood were disrupted in unprecedented,
unexpected ways. The COVID-19 pandemic created new stressors on young adults through
school closures, changes in living arrangements, financial hardship for themselves and their
4 9
families, job instability , and much more (Zhai and Du 2020). As a result of these rapid changes,
young adults felt uncertain about their future job prospects (Kujawa et al. 2020), disappointed
that milestones such as graduation happened online, and overwhelmed with new financial
burdens (Halliburton et al. 2021). This historic event intensified the competing demands young
adults navigate in non-pandemic times – providing a propitious opportunity to study the tension
inherent in this process. From these findings, I challenge the idea that young adults leave parents
or partners behind in the process of forming their independent selves. Instead, their ef forts to
maintain interconnectedness within their network of linked lives are key to their identities as
independent adults.
When collecting responses for a lar ger project about the pandemic’ s impact on romantic
relationships, young adults in particular reported feeling like they were forced back into a
younger life stage. These responses to the pandemic’ s disruption lined up with much of the
pre-pandemic family sociology literature, which shows the cultural emphasis of young adults
setting out on their own, away from their families, getting an education and a job to start an
independent life, with some eventually finding a partner and starting a new family in later
adulthood (Furstenber g et al. 2004). Other streams of research, however , show how young adults
balance this journey toward independence with either their deep familial commitments (Sassler ,
Ciambrone, and Benway 2008) or their romantic connections (Sassler 2010; Shulman and
Connolly 2013). The few projects that bring young adults’ role as romantic partners in
conversation with their role as family members highlights separation as a means to achieve
independence (Fielder and Carey 2010; Gitelson and McDermott 2006; Rosenfeld and Kim
2005). Because the pandemic’ s disruptions caused the balance between independence and
embeddedness with family and partners to become more acute and visible, analyzing young
5 0
adults’ experiences during this time bridges these streams of literature that highlight very
dif ferent pictures of young adulthood.
Findings from this paper shows how young adults achieved independence thr ough their
connectedness with loved ones. Through the r elational work of negotiation, boundary-setting,
and sometimes ar guments, young adults created and asserted their autonomous, independent
identities. This challenges the idea that young adults leave familial responsibility or romantic
commitment behind in the process of forming their independent selves. Because young
adulthood is a key life stage in family formation, this ar gument can have wide-reaching
implications on many areas within the literature.
Implications
Recently , calls have been made for scholars to look at young adults’ development as a
process situated in dif ferent ecological contexts which overlap with family , friends, and romantic
partners (von de Bongardt et al. 2015). Findings from this paper suggest that in addition to this,
young adults’ multiple roles should be seen as interacting with one another simultaneously . This
intervention can be useful in multiple streams of research on young adults, particularly the
research on cumulative economic disadvantage and research studying the many influences on
young adults’ externalizing behaviors.
The literature on externalizing behaviors in young adulthood may benefit from examining
how family and romantic relationships work together to influence these behaviors, or lack
thereof. While some studies do examine the role of parents and peers together in young adults’
current context (Chan et al. 2017), few include the influence of romantic partners in this schema.
From my findings, one could hypothesize that role conflict is another stressor that young adults
respond to with externalizing behaviors (Estrada-Martinez et al. 2012) or that externalizing
5 1
behaviors are another way young adults try to assert independence when they feel tension in their
role as a family member and romantic partner .
Findings from this paper also have key implications for research on cumulative economic
disadvantage. Current theory has expanded the way we conceptualize cumulative disadvantage,
to look at relationships outside of the parent-child dyad (Gilligan, Karraker , and Jasper 2018).
Even influences outside the home, including peer groups and school context, have an additive
ef fect to parental influence on economic (dis)advantage (Nurius, Prince, and Rocha 2015). Like
research on externalizing behaviors, however , romantic relationships are not often highlighted in
this stream of literature. Because we know that people are increasingly partnering up based on
similarity in educational level (McLanahan 2004), this paper highlights role strain as another
possible mechanism behind how romantic relationships exacerbate cumulative economic
inequality . This is particularly true in a period of economic and professional transition, like
emer ging adulthood .
Limitations
Along with its many implications for future research, this paper ’ s limitations leave room
for future scholars to further explore this topic. For example, my selection criteria for recruiting
participants only included partners who have been together for at least six months at the time of
interview . While this allowed me to analyze the processes that couples used to successfully
manage the tension between their multiple roles, the pandemic’ s stressors also drove couples to
break up (Ogan et al. 2021). Adding a comparison group of couples who broke up soon after the
pandemic’ s crises may show dif ferences in how they managed this tension, and how these
dif ferent strategies lead to dif ferent outcomes. I hypothesize that couples who could not
successfully resolve the tension would echo previous studies (Rosenfeld and Kim 2005), where
5 2
moving in with partners and away from their parents is how young adults asserted their
independence.
Another limitation to this study is that the majority of my participants had families that
approved of their relationships. If, for example, I had focused on couples who were in same-sex
relationships or interracial relationships, as Ronsenfeld and Kim (2005) did in their study , I likely
would have encountered more experiences of racism and homophobia from parents. This would
heighten the strain of juggling the three roles I presented in this paper , and I hypothesize my
findings would be more similar to theirs, where the strain leads to the couple moving far away
from parents (Rosenfeld and Kim 2005), or breaking up. This would support the idea from
previous work, that independence implies separation rather than bridging relationships.
Finally , an analysis of how socioeconomic status, and how this dif ferentially impacts
young adults’ ability to balance the tension among their multiple roles, is not the central focus of
this paper . Because previous work (Nurius, Prince, and Rocha 2015) has shown that parental,
neighborhood, and school context intersect to impact young adult’ s experience across the course
of their lives, I would hypothesize that economic strain could increase familial responsibilities
placed on young adults, particularly if they are starting their careers or going to college. This
implies that young adults from less advantaged families would face more tension between their
roles as a family member and partner , while they are trying to establish their independence.
5 3
Chapter 3: W orth It: The Role of Socioeconomic Status in Couples’ Negotiation of Risk
Abstract
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, couples continuously negotiated the decisions they
would make to mitigate risk of infection as well as financial loss. At the same time, the pandemic
has exacerbated existing inequalities in health and economic outcomes, particularly along the
axis of socioeconomic status (SES). While socioeconomic status (SES) is a crucial factor in both
health and economic risk, the literature that explores how couples negotiate risk integrate SES
less into their analyses, and leave room to explore how meanings of risk are constructed within
the negotiation process. The COVID-19 pandemic provides an ample case study to do this,
because it has exacerbated existing SES inequality and made the navigation of health and
economic risk more explicit. This paper draws from in-depth interviews with romantic partners
(N=42: 18 couples and 6 interviewees whose partners could not participate) to analyze the role of
SES on couples’ construction and negotiation of risk during the COVID-19 pandemic. I find that
couples with greater occupational advantage and financial resources were more able to avert
health risk, and constructed economic risk as instrumental for future gains. Because of this, they
were then able to negotiate next steps in their relationship, such as cohabitation or marriage.
Meanwhile, partners with less of these resources had to negotiate how they would simply be able
to make ends meet, and to spend time together while mitigating the health risk they were forced
to take because of their jobs. Based on these findings, I ar gue that (1) Occupational
(dis)advantage and financial resources impact whether couples construct and negotiate risk under
a framework of constraint or of instrumentality and (2) Cumulative (dis)advantages occur not
just health-wise or economically , but also in couples’ ability to take steps forward in the
development of their relationship.
Intr oduction
Open negotiation of health and economic risk are associated with better relationship
outcomes for couples (Malone et al. 2018; Serra-Garcia 2022). Because these negotiations
happen within intimate relationships, decisions are full of complexity and not made based on
rationality alone (Mellini and Poglia Mileti 2022; Nelson 2020; Rance 2018). While many
factors within a relationship impact how couples negotiate risk, the current literature in this area
primarily focuses on each partners’ perception of risk and the power each partner holds in the
relationship (Eleftheriou et al. 2019; Figueiras et al. 2022; Mellini and Poglia Mileti 2022;
Peretti-W atel and Moatti 2006; Pine et al. 2021). This leaves room to explore the role of
demographic factors, like socioeconomic status (SES), which has been extensively studied as an
5 4
influence on both health and economic risk-taking.
Occupational advantage and financial resources (i.e. income) are two common indicators of
socioeconomic status (Conger et al. 2010). They are also crucial factors in health and economic
risk-taking that create similar patterns in both of these arenas. Socioeconomic inequality has
created disparities in potential health risks (Adler and Newman 2002) and in available buf fers
against a variety of negative life events, including economic losses (McLeod and Kessler 1990).
As a result, those with greater occupational advantages and financial resources are better
equipped to avoid potential health risks (Hajat et al. 2010) and empowered to take economic risk
(Keltner et al., 2003; W illiams 2012).
There is, however , mixed evidence regarding both health and economic risk-taking for
those of lower SES. Some evidence suggests that a lack of financial security leads to less
economic risk-taking (Stephens, Markus, and Phillips 2014), while other evidence conceives of a
“nothing to lose” mindset that would increase economic risk-taking (Kish-Gephart and Campbell
2015). Similarly , there are conflicting hypotheses about health risk-taking among lower SES
individuals, with some ar guing that riskier health behaviors are a result of structural constraint
(Bur gard and Lin 2013; Kezios et al. 2023) and others ar guing that these “risky behaviors” are
attempts to exercise agency within these structural constraints (Peretti-W atel and Moatti 2006).
While the role of SES has been extensively explored for individuals’ risk, scholars in this
literature (Higgins and Browne 2008) have called for an exploration of how SES influences
health and economic risk-taking within the complexities of an intimate relationship.
The studies that do answer this call often highlight how important couples’ risk negotiation
is in the (re)construction of intersectional identities such as gender and class (Borum and Philpot
1993; Higgins and Browne 2008). However , the risk present in these studies is mainly implied
5 5
and seen as a behavioral outcome, rather than a socially constructed meaning in and of itself.
Knowing that meanings of risk are socially constructed and are crucial in decision making (Kelly
et al. 201 1; Malone et al. 2018), there should be further exploration of how SES shapes how
couples negotiate and construct meanings of risk.
This paper uses the COVID-19 pandemic as a case study to analyze how SES shapes the
way that couples construct meaning around risk and negotiate it. Because the pandemic has
exacerbated existing SES inequality (Abedi et. al 2020; Bowleg 2020), and couples have been
forced to continuously negotiate their plans for mitigating the health and economic risk posed by
COVID-19 (Morris et al. 2022), this unique historical moment provides an analytical case where
SES inequality and the negotiation of health and economic risk are extremely explicit and
visible. In this context, this paper uses data from N= 42 in-depth interviews with partners in
romantic relationships (18 couples + 6 interviewees whose partners could not participate) to ask:
How does SES impact how couples construct and negotiate health and economic risk?
From these interviews, I find SES dif ferences at the intersection of health and economic
risk: Couples with more occupational advantages, such as flexibility , and more financial
resources, like income and savings, were relatively safer from the pandemic’ s ef fects because
they were more likely to be able to work remotely and less likely to take financial losses. W ith
these safety nets, they constructed risk as instrumental for economic gain, using the pandemic’ s
conditions to build wealth. W ith these safety nets in place, these couples were then able to
negotiate what the next steps in their relationship would look like.
Meanwhile, many couples with less of these resources were forced health risk of working
to prevent further financial losses. As a result, these couples’ ability to safely spend time together
was constrained by the health risk they were forced to take due to their occupations. Based on
5 6
these findings, I ar gue that 1. Occupational (dis)advantage and financial resources impact
whether couples construct and negotiate risk under a framework of instrumentality or of
constraint and 2. Cumulative (dis)advantages occur not just health-wise or economically , but also
in couples’ ability to take steps forward in the development of their relationship.
Literatur e Review
Couples Negotiating Risk: A Complex Y et Rewar ding Pr ocess
Negotiating health and economic risk are both crucial processes that impact romantic
relationships. For example, honest conversations about health that demonstrate high awareness
of possible risks increases trust between partners (Malone et al. 2018), and similar willingness to
take economic risk is associated with higher levels of marital stability (Serra-Garcia 2022). By
nature, negotiation of these dif ferent risks happen in a complex relationship dynamic, meaning
that decisions are not made based on rationality alone (Mellini and Poglia Mileti 2022; Nelson
2020), are full of contradictions, and involve many intersecting risks (Rance et al. 2018). Many
factors influence how couples negotiate finances and health decisions, including interpretation of
available risk information (Pine et al. 2021; Peretti-W atel and Moatti 2006), perception of one’ s
risk relative to others (Figueiras et al. 2022), judgment of partner ’ s attractiveness (Eleftheriou et
al. 2019), and the power and resources available to each partner (Mellini and Poglia Mileti
2022). Though this literature extensively explores each partners’ perceptions of risk and the
power they have to make decisions based on these perceptions, the relationship exists within a
specific social context, and the influence of this context has not been explored as deeply . For
example, elements of SES like occupational advantage and financial resources are crucial in
health and economic risk-taking, but have mainly been explored as factors in individual
risk-taking.
5 7
Risk-T aking and Socioeconomic Status
There are strong correlations between economic risk-taking and socioeconomic conditions,
past and present (Kish-Gephart 2017; Kish-Gephart and Campbell 2015). Experimental evidence
(Payne, Brown-Iannuzzi, and Hannay 2017) shows that greater economic inequality induces
people to take greater economic risks. In addition, research shows that those with higher incomes
and savings feel less constrained by the threat of potential loss because of their built-in financial
safety net, empowering them to take risks and focus on future rewards (Keltner et al., 2003;
W illiams 2012). There is mixed evidence for those with less financial resources: some research
suggests that having no financial safety net leads to more caution (Stephens, Markus, and
Phillips 2014), and others ar gue that less financial resources leads to greater risk taking because
of a “nothing to lose” mindset (Kish-Gephart and Campbell 2015). Similarly , SES inequality has
a strong ef fect on exposure to health risks.
Health disparities due to neighborhood (Diez Roux and Mair 2010; Ramirez-V alles,
Zimmerman, and Newcomb 1998), occupational (dis)advantage (Muntaner et al. 2010), and
financial resources (W ilkinson and Pickett 2006) demonstrate that there is also a strong link
between SES and exposure to health risks. Health risk-taking could therefore be seen as the
result of structural constraint when, for example, occupational conditions for lower -SES
individuals tend to come with greater exposure to health hazards (Bur gard and Lin 2013; Kezios
et al. 2023). While those at the lower end of the economic spectrum are at increased health risk
for acute and chronic diseases (Hajat et al. 2010; Smith et al. 1998), an alternative perspective
suggests that engaging in risky behaviors, such as drug use or refusal to use condoms, may be
done deliberately to find a sense of control within structural constraint (Peretti-W atel and Moatti
2006). While the role of SES and risk has been extensively explored, scholars in this literature
5 8
(Higgins and Browne 2008) have called for a shift away from individuals as the unit of analysis,
allowing for a deeper look at how SES and these dif ferent forms of risk interact with the complex
dynamics within intimate relationships.
SES and Risk in Romantic Relationships: Construction of Meaning
In intimate relationships specifically , meanings constructed around gender , class, and
occupation all shape how partners perceive and negotiate health risk (Borum and Philpot 1993).
For example, constructed meanings around masculinity and sex dif fer by SES, leading to
dif ferent outcomes in contraception use. Less af fluent partners constructed men’ s sexual needs as
innate and biological, while more af fluent individuals expect men to control their sexual ur ges
and be respectful, invoking an image of “mind over matter” (Higgins and Browne 2008).
Constructed meanings around class and gender can also impact the navigation of health and
economic risk at the same time. For example, hookups can be used to avoid romantic
commitment in favor of career development, so greater participation by af fluent women creates
better educational and professional outcomes for them, despite going against norms of femininity
(Hamilton and Armstrong 2009) and being the “riskier” choice from a health promotion
perspective (Heldman and W ade 2010). Studies like these have explored how SES impacts how
people construct and engage with meanings around intimacy , gender , and class. However , the
risk present in these studies is implied. From here, there needs to be further exploration of how
SES shapes how romantic partners construct and negotiate risk as a couple.
Thus, this paper responds to the call “to acknowledge how couples negotiate [this] risk,
alongside pleasure and commitment within ongoing relationships” (Kelly et al. 201 1:815),
adding the ways that SES shapes how couples work together to negotiate multiple forms of risk.
The COVID-19 pandemic provides a fruitful analytical context for doing just that, because it has
5 9
1. exacerbated existing SES inequality and 2. made the simultaneous management of health and
economic risk more explicit.
The Case of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Acute Inequality and Risk Negotiation
The pandemic has exacerbated intersecting race, gender , and SES inequalities (Abedi et. al
2020; Bowleg 2020). W omen, people of color , and undocumented workers were and continue to
be disproportionately af fected by business closures, and were more likely to work in industries
with less flexibility to transition to remote work (Alon et al. 2020; Page et al. 2020). As a result,
couples who were in the bottom 25th percentile pre-pandemic were the most likely to have both
partners lose their jobs during the pandemic (Qian and Hu 2021). This job inflexibility and
financial stress has also increased the likelihood of low-income families of color being exposed
to COVID-19 (Patel et al. 2020). As a result of all of these ripple ef fects from the pandemic,
couples from mar ginalized communities particularly perceived the pandemic as a threat to their
relationships (Li and Samp 2021). The socioeconomic inequalities that were exacerbated by
COVID influence the ways that people perceive and respond to risk in this unique historical
context.
Isolation, estrangement from relationships, financial loss, illness, and death are just a few
of the intersecting risks present during the COVID-19 pandemic. Romantic partners’ perception
of these risks are influenced by the people in their network, where they get their information, and
how they compare other people’ s situations to their own (Pine et al. 2021; Figueiras et al. 2022).
In response to the pandemic’ s multiple risks, romantic partners have used this challenging time
to grow closer together (Nuru and Bruess 2021), and working with a romantic partner to navigate
the many risks from the pandemic was one way to do this (Xiang et al. 2022).
Compatibility in beliefs about COVID-19, and the measures one should take to protect
6 0
oneself from risk, emer ged as a new filtering criteria for potential dating partners (W illiams,
Miller , and Marquez-V elarde 2021). For couples in committed relationships, clear
communication, assumptions about shared values, and fear of of fending one’ s partner were all
factors that impacted the risk negotiation process (Morris et al. 2022). In this unique social
context, when inequality and the simultaneous navigation of health and economic risk have
become more acute and visible, this paper asks: How does SES impact how couples construct
and negotiate health and economic risk?
Methods
Recruitment
T o answer this question, this study uses in-depth interviews with romantic partners (N=42,
18 couples + 6 partners), analyzing the roles of income and occupation in the way they
negotiated risk during the COVID-19 pandemic. Because stay-at-home orders and social
distancing guidelines were in place at the start of this project, participants were recruited using
social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit, as well as online and in-person
newspapers. The sample of interviewees in this paper only includes partners within the United
States, to mitigate the country-level variation in COVID-19 guidelines. In addition, I screened
for couples who had been together for at least 6 months at the time they were interviewed. This
sampling strategy was meant to focus on the ef fects of the pandemic on the relationship, rather
than the initial challenges of couples negotiating risk while getting to know each other . The
length of time interviewees have been with their partners when they were interviewed ranged
from 6 months to 30 years.
This study used a technique in grounded theory called theor etical sampling (Corbin and
Strauss 1990), where researchers recruit a sample of interviewees, code interviews for common
6 1
themes, and use theoretical frameworks in the literature to make hypotheses that explain why
these themes are arising. After this, the researcher recruits new participants to test these
hypotheses. W ith this paper , for example, when I started finding many romantic partners had to
engage in health-hazardous work because they had to have money to support their families, I
wanted to recruit participants with higher levels of income to see if a financial safety net would
keep couples from having to make these choices.
If they expressed interest in the study , each participant filled out a demographic survey and
consent form that collects information such as level of income, and the type of union they are in
(dating, cohabiting, married, etc.). This data is provided in T able 3.1 below . There are six
participants whose partners did not want to participate in the study , so the sample of interviews
used in this paper is made of 18 couples (N=36) and 6 partners. The majority of participants
(54%, 24 interviewees) were in a committed relationship with their partners, but not living
together , and the highest percentage of interviewees (38%) made between $40,000 and $75,000.
Data Collection
After filling out the consent form and survey , each partner sat down for a separate in-depth
interview via the videoconferencing app Zoom. New research has shown that conducting
interviews over Zoom may help participants feel more comfortable and can help researchers cast
their recruitment net wider (Archibald et al. 2019; Olif fe et al. 2021). The drawbacks to Zoom,
however , are technological glitches that interrupt the flow of the interview and not being able to
observe the participants’ full body language. These were necessary concessions for this study ,
however , because almost all of the participants preferred Zoom interviews versus in-person ones,
regardless of the COVID-19 guidelines in place.
These in-depth interviews, ranging from one to three hours, focused on the way that
6 2
couples date (i.e., their favorite activities and the ways they spend time together), their and their
families’ economic circumstances, and the language they use to talk about their challenges and
triumphs throughout the pandemic. Data for this study is coded using the constant comparative
method , another technique from grounded theory where researchers code major themes that arise
multiple times in one interview , then recode interviews with both partners in a couple, and then
recode again with groups of three or four partners (Glaser 1965). This process repeats until the
only remaining themes are ones that are salient across multiple interviews in the sample, which is
called the point of saturation (Glaser and Strauss 1967). A timeline of when each interview was
conducted, and the COVID-19 guidelines in place at each stage, is provided in T able 3.2.
Health and economic risk were ar guably the highest throughout 2020, when masks and
COVID tests were less widely available, vaccines were still in development, and job losses were
the highest. However , negotiating health and economic risk, and the dif ferential ef fect of SES on
these processes remained salient regardless of when interviews were conducted. This reinforces
the robustness and saturation of these themes.
Operationalizing SES
How researchers operationalize socioeconomic status (SES) continues to vary widely in
family sociology and beyond (Conger et al. 2010), and this is certainly true in the previous
literature I am engaging with in this paper . In my own analysis, I operationalize SES in a very
specific way , using occupational advantage and financial resources as proxies. I am using
occupational advantage, rather than the most common occupational proxy for SES, which is
prestige (Conger et al. 2010), because researchers are still determining how neatly the
pandemic’ s unequal impact maps onto the structure of occupational prestige that we used
pre-2020 (Kramer and Kramer 2020). Occupational advantage most often manifested in my
6 3
interviews as the ability to transition to remote work and/or the ability to minimize in-person
contact with the public. The second proximal element for SES I use are financial resources,
specifically income and savings.
In their systematic review , Conger and colleagues (2010) find that education, income, and
occupation are the most common ways of operationalizing SES when analyzing its link to
romantic relationship outcomes. While they acknowledge that these measures all operate
dif ferently , the researchers ar gue that the strong correlation between these factors mean that they
could each be used. They write:
“...there is a strong positive association between occupational prestige and income
(T reiman, 1976). Given these established relationships, it is reasonable
to expect that much of the influence of…occupational status on marital functioning will be
indirect through variations in economic well-being” (Conger et al. 2010: 4).
I make similar assumptions in this paper when I operationalize SES. Because these were
the elements of SES most salient in interviews, and each of these factors have direct, indirect,
and intersecting influences on couples’ negotiation of risk “through variations of economic
wellbeing”, I use occupational advantage and financial resources as proxies for SES throughout
this paper .
Therefore, couples that I refer to as “higher SES” tended to have higher incomes and more
money saved away . These couples were also more likely to have jobs that made a smoother
transition to remote work without a loss in pay (Baker 2020), and flexibility in their response to
sudden emer gencies that lead to changes in the participants’ work hours (ex. their children’ s
schedules with online school, a family member contracting COVID, etc).
In contrast, couples that I refer to as “lower SES” tended to have jobs that couldn’ t
transition to remote work as easily , leading to participants either losing their job altogether or
having to take the health risk of working in-person. In addition, these couples tended to have less
6 4
of a financial safety net, in terms of income and savings, to fall back on when the exogenous
shock of the pandemic came. Because I am interested in comparing participants at the couples
level, my analysis slots couples into this “high and low” binary . I tackle the limitations of this
strategy in the discussion section of this paper .
T able 3.1 Interviewees’ Relationship Statuses and Income Per Y ear (Percentages Rounded to the
Nearest Integer)
N 18 couples + 6 partners = 42 participants
Relationship Status (Number of
Partners and % of T otal Sample)
Dating, Living Apart = 24 (54%)
Cohabiting = 8 (18%)
Engaged - Living Apart = 2 (5%)
Married = 10 (23%)
Income per Y ear (Number of
Partners and % of T otal Sample)
$0-$10,000 = 12 (29%)
$10,000-$40,000 = 8 (19%)
$40,000-$75,000 = 16 (38%)
$75,000-$100,000 = 2 (5%)
$100,000+ = 4 (10%)
T able 1.2 T imeline of Interviews (Month/Y ear/Level of Restriction, CDC 2023)
Month/Y ear State of the
Pandemic (CDC
Museum - COVID-19
T imeline)
Number of Interviews
May 2020
● The US death
toll surpasses
100,000.
● Businesses,
schools, and
places of
leisure
remained
closed/remote.
● Stay-at-home
orders in place
6
June 2020
● Businesses,
schools, and
places of
leisure
6
6 5
remained
closed/remote.
● Stay-at-home
orders in place
December 2020
● Businesses,
schools, and
places of
leisure
remained
closed/remote.
● Stay-at-home
orders in place
4
January 2021
● Stay-at-home
orders lifted
● V accinations
begin
8
May 2021
● CDC
announces that
fully
vaccinated
people can
gather indoors
without masks
(March 2021)
● Restaurants,
stadiums,
museums, and
theme parks
reopened
● 62% of
Americans had
at least one
dose of the
COVID-19
vaccine
16
6 6
March 2022
● In-person
classes
resumed
● Indoor
masking
mandates lifted
● 65.5% of
Americans
were fully
vaccinated.
75% of
Americans had
at least one
dose.
2
T otal Interviews N=42
Results
Based on these interviews, SES dif ferences emer ged at the intersection of health and
economic risk. For couples with more financial resources and occupational flexibility , health risk
could more easily be avoided or and economic risk could work out for the couple’ s benefit, such
as through buying a home. W ith these safety nets in place and the potential for upward economic
mobility , I find that these couples negotiate and reflect on how they can emotionally take the
relationship to the next level, such as moving in together , or getting married.
In contrast, couples with less financial resources and occupational flexibility do not have
this luxury . Because of the health risks they have to put themselves in to support themselves
financially , they had to negotiate how and when they could safely spend time together in-person
(if they did not live together), or the extra safety measures they would take to avoid infecting
each other and other members of their household (if they lived together). Therefore, I ar gue that
occupational (dis)advantage and financial resources impact whether couples construct and
negotiate risk under a framework of constraint or of instrumentality and future gain, giving
6 7
greater advantages to higher SES couples financially and in the emotional development of their
relationship.
Risk is Constraint
Couples with less financial resources have a smaller safety net to fall back on in case of
unforeseen economic circumstances (McLeod and Kessler 1990) like a global pandemic, and less
job flexibility or adaptability to mitigate risk of infection without suf fering financial losses
(Baker 2020; Bur gard and Lin 2013). As a result, the primary concern for couples as they
negotiated health and economic risk was how they were going to keep themselves, their partners,
and their families safe despite the risk they were forced to take because of their jobs. Mary , who
is in her fifties and part of a law enforcement agency , explains this:
“My husband's diabetic which he controls with diet, but still underlying health
conditions…we’re like, ‘Okay well we still have to go to work, because I don't get a
furlough. I don't get to stay home’, you know? And then he was still working. So, you
know , a lot of those conversations revolved around how to deal with church, what was
going on at my work, and how we're going to keep the old people at home safe.”
Mary’ s explanation points to the constraint that couples were under if they had no choice
but to work in-person during the height of the pandemic. Because they had no choice but to
expose themselves to health risk, Mary and her husband had to focus on how they were going to
minimize the risk of exposure to each other and the other family members that lived with them.
She continues by explaining that she and her husband tackled this by agreeing to limit their
interactions with anyone outside of their household:
“I meet mostly with the same three or four people, and he's only around our [church]
music director , one of our elders, you know , the Secretary was like on shortened hours.
My husband said, “Look, I was all about social distancing before anybody made the term
up…he tends not to be (aside from with me) a touchy-feely-huggy kind of person by
nature. Y ou know , so he you know he stands across the room, just on a normal basis. So
there were a lot of factors in all of that, you know , especially being worried about our
relatives at home.”
6 8
Because Mary and her husband had to interact with others in their jobs, their strategy to
minimize health risk to themselves and other household members was by limiting their contact
with those outside the household. Other couples who lived together changed their daily habits in
the home to mitigate risk of infection, but negotiating what these habits looked like was
challenging. Martin, a construction manager in his fifties, talks about how he and his wife
negotiated the steps he would take when he got home from work to keep both of them safe:
“I think I worried, a little bit less about getting ill or attracting a virus and didn't take all
the steps quite as seriously in the beginning…simple things like gloves and masks and,
you know , when I come home from work there's a separate laundry bin in the garage so
my clothes go in a separate laundry bag. I go directly into the shower and then taking you
know bleach water solution and disinfecting the shower and then if I touched anything on
my way out through the house disinfecting all those things…I was doing it but not as
thoroughly as I could have, in the beginning, And then she had to let me know she wasn't
real comfortable with how I was handling it. And so I took the steps to improve what I
was doing.”
The extra safety precautions that Martin had to take because he was in contact with so
many people presented one of the challenges Martin and his wife faced when they were locked
down together . Similarly , couples who did not live together had to negotiate how they would
mitigate infection risk, primarily in their approach to seeing each other in-person. The solution
some came to was not seeing each other in-person at all. When I interviewed Joshua (22, a recent
college graduate) and Daisy (21, who also recently graduated from college), they described their
challenge with having to do this, particularly throughout the summer and fall of 2020 when
vaccines were still in development. Joshua says:
“One of my jobs I was working as a physical therapy (PT) aid at a [private] clinic for about
a month or so, and they laid me of f. So, because of that, now I'm working back to working
at my old job which is at a local grocery store.”
Interviewer: Is it something that you and Daisy talked about?
Joshua: Oh yes, definitely . W e tell each other . W e make it a point to tell each
other…everything that we're stressing out about.”
Though Joshua wanted to continue working as a PT aid to gain experience in his field, the
6 9
pandemic halted this career progress, and he was then forced to work in a job where he was in
contact with even more of the public on a daily basis. This forced him and Daisy to reconsider
seeing each other in-person. Daisy , who is extremely cautious when it comes to COVID safety ,
says:
“He wants to meet up with me still sometimes. He'll be like, ‘Hey , do you wanna hang
out?’ And I'm like, ‘Nope.’ He's willing to see me as much as possible, and I'm not willing
to see him until I'm ready for this, mostly because he works at a grocery store, and that's a
really scary place to work right now .”
The pandemic’ s fallout has not only stalled Joshua’ s career progress, but the risk of
infection that he is exposed to at work has also constrained the ability for him and Daisy to see
each other in-person at all. Other non-residential couples wanted to find creative ways around
these SES-influenced constraints. For example, Nick (25, welder) and Jess (24, academic
advisor) talked about the strain they were under because Nick had to work in-person, and both of
their parents were at higher risk of infection. When I ask about how his life changed during the
pandemic, he explains:
“I make most of the money in the house, so I've actually told my mom to stop
working...she is close to 60. I've pretty much taken the financial responsibility of taking
care of her and myself while my dad still works. I couldn't really go to Jess’ s house, or she
couldn't really come to my house, because we both live with our parents. It was very
dif ficult, and it did put a strain on our relationship.”
The economic hardship that Jess and Nick were under meant that they had to continue
working in-person, constrained in their ability to meet each other face to face. In response, they
looked for creative ways to get around these constraints to see each other . Jess says:
“When the quarantine first started, I took it very seriously . He was taking it seriously , but
not as much as I was. So I was like, ‘Hey , we can’ t see each other ’. But then once things
started relaxing, that's when we started meeting up again in-person. And I'm like, ‘Okay ,
well, we try to find a way around that and we’d go to the grocery store together . There's
nothing wrong with that - people need to do that.’ “
The way that Jess and Nick spent time together while mitigating risk of infection was by
7 0
doing required errands together . Until the pandemic’ s restrictions were lifted in May 2021, this
was the primary way that they spent in-person time together .
On top of greater health precarity , many couples in my study with less occupational
advantage and financial resources talked about the strain in negotiating finances. Mandy , a
24-year -old educator , talks about this struggle when she was not working and her husband was
on sick leave:
I think we could feel the distance because we would talk about it. W e would talk about
the troubles, the troubles we had. W e would try to talk about how to make ends meet, but
will not agree on this. Things like expenses, maybe with food, like maybe we should not
be ordering, we should cook. I think it was dif ficult, with a lot of misunderstandings.
Mandy and her husband’ s financial hardships had them negotiating how they could limit
their spending. W ithout a substantial financial safety net, the risk of running out of money was
tangible and straining on Mandy’ s marriage. Like Mandy , Ron (19, student) and his partner Kim
(19, student) had to negotiate their future and its possible risks under this framework of
constraint. W anting to cohabit but not being able to af ford their own place to live, Ron describes
his future plans:
“I had a contract job as a video editor for a little bit. Then after that, I decided to just go
get a full-time job physically [in-person]. The reason I decided to get a physical
[in-person] job is because I'm trying to save money . Because I'm trying to move in with
her in February…and just live with Kim for as long as my money can carry me. The nine
to five has been a little tough, which extended into our relationship. It kind of rough and
they don't pay you…and that was making me very grumpy all the time.”
While Ron wanted to take what he saw as the next step in his relationship with Kim,
cohabitation, his financial situation constrained him. In response, Ron took on in-person work
which was more stressful mentally and more health-hazardous than remote work. T ogether , these
took a toll on his relationship with Kim. Like many other couples with less financial resources,
Ron and Kim’ s plans to move in together , and the risk of not being successful long-term, are
7 1
constrained by their financial resources.
Because partners with less occupational flexibility and financial resources had higher
exposure to negative health and economic outcomes, they constructed risk as a constraining
factor , and their negotiation of risk was primarily a response to this constraint. In contrast,
couples with more job flexibility and a wider financial safety net were able to avoid health risk
and construct economic risk as instrumental. Because of this, their negotiation of risk was
directed towards future gain, financially and in the development of their relationships, rather than
a response to constraints
Risk Can be Instrumental, or else, A voided
Couples with greater financial resources and flexible occupations still had conflict and
situations they had to negotiate through, but were shielded from many of the health or economic
consequences that lower SES couples faced. For example, Martina, a graduate student in her
thirties, talked about this when we asked her about how the pandemic af fected her:
“It didn't really af fect me much, because when classes moved online, it was spring quarter .
I was here at home…I knew I had a roof over my head, but…I wasn’ t in danger of losing it
or anything, there was no risk here. So…my situation was stable, stable enough to, you
know , put me through the…pandemic. W e just moved online.”
Martina’ s wife Kaya, who works as a higher education administrator , agrees and even says
she prefers her job conditions during lockdown:
Kaya: Finally we were able to work from home and stuf f like that.
Interviewer: How has that been for you, like experiencing working from home, what has
that whole experience been like?
Kaya: I love it. I never want to go back.
Because Martina and Kaya did not have to expose themselves to health risks in order to
work, the main challenge they had to negotiate through had to do with emotional and physical
boundaries. Specifically , they had to talk through how much time they would be spending
7 2
together . As Martina explains:
“What was very important was learning that we need, we each needed our own space,
because we were spending 24/7 together . Y eah, sometimes we would like, yeah, we would
pick up little fights because we would get annoyed at each other . Just because we needed
that time for ourselves.”
Kaya echoes this when we asked her about how the pandemic would impact their
relationship long-term. She says, “I guess maybe we learned that it's good to have our own
downtime. So we call it Kaya/Martina time. W e learned how important that was…to kind of give
each other that space.”
Because Kaya and Martina’ s jobs allowed them to avoid the health risk of working outside
their home, their daily negotiation processes had less to do with balancing infection risk while
keeping up their romantic connection. This allowed them to gain a better understanding of each
other ’ s boundaries in their quality time, which they both say will have a positive impact on their
relationship long-term. In this way , the safeguards from infection provided by higher SES jobs
(Kramer and Kramer 2020) allowed them to avoid risk altogether , to focus on negotiating
emotional boundaries that helped develop their relationship in a deeper way .
The safety of working conditions with less contact with the public also tended to allow for
non-residential couples to see each other more. Melissa, a 19-year -old student, describes how she
was able to see her boyfriend Habbi (19, student) because her job as a tutor only exposed her to a
single family in her inner circle. She explains:
“I wasn't working working, I wasn't in high interaction with people. [It was] just my circle.
I was not really going out to see a lot of people, but then my boyfriend's parents started to
loosen up on COVID [safety precautions] so we were able to hang out as long it was
outside for a while, and finally it slowly evolved into hanging out at each other's houses
but like, ‘Don't go anywhere else.’ So you’re hanging out like in the backyard of his
house and slowly then it was like, ‘If you're just seeing each other it's fine’ type thing.”
The fact that Melissa did not have to be exposed to lar ge amounts of people at work over
7 3
time af forded her greater and greater in-person contact with Habbi. Her experience stands in
contrast to couples whose occupations put them in contact with the public and raised their risk of
infection, like Joshua and Daisy who did not see each other at all, or Nick and Jess who had to
get creative in order to meet in-person.
On top of avoiding health risks, higher SES couples also had the financial resources to use
the pandemic’ s conditions to their advantage. Roger , a 30-year -old software engineer , describes
how his occupational conditions and the money he set aside pre-pandemic allowed him to buy a
house:
“I closed in November , and when I closed, it was incredibly competitive. And now if I
want to buy that same house, it went up even more…I kind of learned that if people were
going to buy a house before, given the pandemic, the situation didn't change for them…it's
either you're an investor that already - you’re already set. Or you had a job that the
pandemic didn’ t af fect, like for myself, I can do this job anywhere. But if you got sent
home, maybe that wasn't going to allow you to do that.”
For couples in this situation, their negotiation of risk frames risk in a slightly dif ferent way:
rather than constraining, risk is scary but ultimately instrumental for future economic gains.
Gio’ s (26, mortgage loan consultant) description of his and his partner Rachel’ s (25, project
accountant) mindset after buying their home demonstrates this:
“People were saying it was going to crash and it could, it could have, you know? I was
taking a risk, or we were taking a risk. But I saw an opportunity…and it was the greatest
move because the housing market heated up. I'm sure you've heard, there's been wars like
you’ve never seen before in housing history . Our home, in a span of six months, went up
$100,000 to what it was valued at. I'm just like, ‘This is insane,’ and it wouldn't have
happened if COVID would have never happened.”
Rachel agrees with this mindset, but adds that their ability to take an economic risk like
buying a home also comes from their economic resources. When we asked her what lessons she
took away from the pandemic, she responds:
“It's gonna sound so cliché, but do the thing that scares you. Because it is really , really
scary making a lot of choices. Don't get me wrong, we were also very privileged to have
7 4
stepped into these positions, like with the house, you know what I mean, things kind of fell
together . W e were privileged for that. But also, just definitely be as risky as you can. Risk it
all. I know not everyone is in that situation. Like not everyone can.”
Rather than a restricting force that they had to work around, risk for these couples was
instead framed as a challenge that required a leap of faith. Though couples did negotiate these
decisions, these negotiations focused on the implications of these economic milestones for the
development of their relationship. Hazel describes this with her partner Roger , particularly when
the pandemic delayed Roger ’ s plans of buying a house:
“From the get go,we were like, ‘This is our plan and this is a serious relationship and we're
going to get married and we're going to do this ’. But there's not enough houses, there's a
lot of demand, we're having those conversations of ‘W ell what do we do? Our timeline is
wonky ,’ I didn’ t want to pressure him, but he also needed to live on his own. So, it brought
up those conversations of where do we stand so that we're both happy with where our
relationship is heading.”
A challenge in Hazel and Roger ’ s relationship during the pandemic was the lack of
autonomy that Roger was feeling because he had to quarantine with his parents, so him buying a
home opened up conversations of where the relationship would go next, in order for both
partners to get their expected timelines on the same page. Roger explains:
“I made it clear even frequently that I wanted to live alone, for at least a year , because I've
been with my parents for forever . I don't want anybody telling me anything, I don't want
any input. Like, I just want some freedom for a year . So I've made that pretty clear .
Depending on what route our relationship goes, she also knows that we're not moving in
unless we're engaged. But in terms of engaging, I don't know when that's gonna happen. I
want to save up and then evaluate the situation in a few months. But I'm definitely not
ready for engagement or getting married right now .”
After taking a risk and achieving such a huge economic milestone, Roger and Hazel were
able to negotiate the timeline for the next steps in their relationship - specifically , living together ,
getting engaged, and getting married. While these conversations between them were still ongoing
at the time of Hazel and Roger ’ s interviews, Gio and Rachel came to an agreement. Rachel says:
“So that was step one: the house. Then the conversation we had pretty often would always
7 5
sound like, ‘So are we probably going to get married or are we moving too fast? Are we
actually doing this?’ And to me it didn't make sense to not want to marry a man that I saw
and admire so much. It just felt right. There's a lot of love in here.”
Like Hazel and Roger , the economic risk that Gio and Rachel made paid of f, which allowed
them to negotiate the next steps in the relationship. They quickly came to a conclusion to these
negotiations: a few months after their interviews in December of 2021, Gio and Rachel got
married.
When negotiating health and economic risk, higher SES couples were safer from the
pandemic’ s ef fects because they could work remotely and were more likely to have financial
capital saved away . W ith these safety nets, they constructed risk as instrumental, and used the
pandemic’ s economic conditions to achieve economic gain, such as a home that astronomically
increased in value. These couples were then able to negotiate what the next steps in their
relationship would look like after building wealth together . Meanwhile, partners with less of
these resources simply had to negotiate how they would spend quality time together , because
their occupations and lack of a financial safety net required them to take on health hazardous
work. Based on these findings, I ar gue that 1. Occupational advantage and financial resources
impact whether couples construct and negotiate risk under a framework of constraint or of
instrumentality and 2. Cumulative (dis)advantages occur not just health-wise or economically ,
but also in couples’ ability to take steps forward in the development of their relationship.
Discussion
Couples’ negotiation of risk is a complex process that calls sociologists to move away from
treating romantic partners solely as rational actors (Mellini and Poglia Mileti 2022; Nelson 2020;
Rance 2018). However , the current literature requires deeper exploration into sociocultural
factors beyond the dynamics between partners, and how these factors influence the meanings of
7 6
risk constructed within risk negotiation. For example, socioeconomic status (SES) has been
extensively studied as an influencing factor in both health (Adler and Newman 2002) and
economic risk-taking (McLeod and Kessler 1990) in individuals, but is less explored in the
process of negotiation between romantic partners.
The COVID-19 pandemic is a fruitful case study to analyze this, because the pandemic has
exacerbated existing SES inequality (Abedi et. al 2020; Bowleg 2020), and the navigation of
health and economic risk is at the forefront of couples’ minds (Morris et al. 2022). In this unique
historical context, this paper uses data from N= 42 in-depth interviews with partners in romantic
relationships (18 couples + 6 interviewees whose partners could not participate) to ask: How
does SES impact how couples construct and negotiate health and economic risk?
I find that partners with less financial capital and job flexibility had no choice but to take
the health risk of working. As a result, these couples had to negotiate how they would make ends
meet and be safely be together in-person while mitigating the health risk they were forced to
take due to their occupations.
Couples with more occupational advantages, like flexibility , and more financial resources,
like income and savings, were shielded from these consequences. As a result, they viewed risk as
something that could be avoided or used to their benefit. Because of this, their negotiation had
less to do with how to react to the constraints of risk. Instead, they were empowered by avoiding
risk or reaping its benefits, which allowed them to reach a deeper emotional understanding of
how they were going to develop their relationship going forward. Based on these findings, I
ar gue that occupational (dis)advantage and financial resources impact whether couples construct
and negotiate risk under a framework of constraint or of instrumentality , which further
advantages higher SES couples financially and in the emotional development of their
7 7
relationship. This can have implications for research on risk-taking behaviors, both economically
and with regard to health.
Implications
Perceptions of and preferences for taking economic risk have been shown to be heavily
influenced by peoples’ current (Kish-Gephart 2017) and past (Kish-Gephart and Campbell 2015)
socioeconomic positions. However , similar to what has already been found in the literature on
health risk (Kelly et al. 201 1; Malone et al. 2018), findings from this paper suggest that peoples’
perception and assessment of economic risk is constructed in relationships. In romantic
relationships, each partner is making compromises and af fordances that take their partner ’ s
economic situation into account. As couples negotiate together , meanings around risk are
constructed alongside meanings of gender and class (Hamilton and Armstrong 2009; Higgins and
Browne 2008) that have been found in previous research.
Secondly , research at the intersection of SES and health continue to ask why those on the
lower end of the SES spectrum engage in behaviors that put them at greater risk, and there is
evidence that these ef fects and their consequences accumulate across the life course (L ynch,
Kaplan, and Salonen 1997). This paper supports the idea that structural constraint is what leads
lower SES couples to take risks that further disadvantage them financially , in terms of health,
and also in their ability to take steps forward in the development of their relationship.
Conversely , greater occupational advantage and financial resources provide higher SES couples
with the flexibility and safety net to take instrumental economic risks and avoid health risks. As
a result, these couples are able to take what they see as the next step in their relationship.
Limitations
This paper provides these key contributions and implications for future research to build
7 8
upon, but its limitations also leave multiple questions for future work to address. Firstly , in this
paper the way I operationalize SES and categorize my participants accordingly limits some of the
nuance in my comparisons. For example, wealth is absent from my conception of SES, even
though previous research has ar gued it is just as important as income and occupation in the
perpetuation of SES inequality (Hällsten and Thaning 2022). W ealth as a variable also operates
very dif ferently than income. For example, racial dif ferences in income have lar gely decreased,
while wealth remains severely unequal by race (Neckerman and T oche 2007). This begs the
question: Does wealth operate independently or uniquely from income or savings in couples’
negotiation of risk during the pandemic? One could hypothesize that having wealth could be
another buf fer from financial precarity , or that couples’ assets during the pandemic fluctuated
dramatically with the rest of the economy , but how this impacts couples’ negotiation of risk
would need to be explored further .
The way I categorize my participants also slots them into a binary of “high or low” SES,
leaving out experiences of being “in the middle” or oscillating between dif ferent financial and
occupational circumstances over time. It also assumes both partners in a relationship have similar
occupational advantages and financial resources. While couples’ similarity by SES has increased
in the United States over time, and remains one of the most common similarities romantic
partners have (Fu and Heaton 2008), dif ferences in occupational advantage and financial
resources could impact the negotiating power available to each partner (Mellini and Poglia Mileti
2022). In addition, dif ferences in occupational advantage and financial resources could make it
more challenging to make decisions (ex. health-wise or economically) that work for both
partners. Since we know that SES intersected with other identities like gender impact individual
partners’ construction of meaning for things like sex and relationships (Hamilton and Armstrong
7 9
2009), SES dif ferences would certainly have an impact on how each partner constructs risk
dif ferently . This means that each partner could be entering negotiations with dif ferent
conceptions of what risk means. Future research could explore how these dif ferent constructed
meanings of risk intersect with imbalances of power and resources to impact couples’
negotiations.
8 0
Conclusion
This dissertation project uses the COVID-19 pandemic’ s sweeping impact as a case study
to analyze patterns in romantic relationships in three main areas: first, the increasing integration
of technology with couples’ face-to-face communication; second, how young adults balance their
journey to independence with their commitments to their families and partners; and finally , the
impact of SES inequality on couples’ construction and negotiation of risk. The papers in this
project explore how couples navigate these three dif ferent arenas, and how they impact couples’
feelings of closeness, the bridging of young adults’ relational ties, and the developmental
outcomes of their relationship.
While the pandemic serves as a common backdrop connecting and driving each paper ’ s
findings, they are also linked by themes of couples’ resilience and the construction of meaning
within relationships. Theoretically , they are also similar in that their contributions sit at the
intersection of multiple streams of literature, meaning that this project can have implications on
inquiry both within sociology and beyond.
Studies conducted over the last three years have shown how romantic partners used the
pandemic’ s disruption and uncertainty to grow in their relationships (Nuru and Buress 2021), and
dream about a happy future together (Guetto, V ignoli, and Bazzani 2021). In dif ferent ways, each
of these three papers highlight how couples were able to remain resilient and connected with
each other throughout the uncertainty , instability , and crisis of the pandemic. In the first paper ,
couples used technology , both when they were together face-to-face and separated by distance,
as a form of escapism to make time fly by . In these hours they spent together , away from the
frightening uncertainty of the world around them, couples constructed time as their most
treasured commodity , which brought them closer together .
8 1
The second paper , which focused on emer ging adults , analyzed how they were able to
remain resilient in their romantic commitment to their partners, while navigating responsibilities
to their families and to themselves as they construct their identity as independent adults. Rather
than separating from their partners and families, young adults constructed and asserted their
independent identity by bridging their dif ferent relational ties together . Through these dif ficult
processes, they redefined the meaning of independence, both in their personal lives and in the
current sociological literature.
The third paper shows that the ability to use the pandemic’ s disruption to grow
relationships and work towards dream futures was not equally accessible. Some romantic
partners were forced to risk their health through their jobs, making them decide whether and how
they were going to make ends meet, while being together in-person, and not getting each other
sick. Meanwhile, other couples were able to safely adapt their job situations and use their
financial resources to further build their wealth. From there, they had a wider financial and
health safety net to take next steps in the development of their relationships. Therefore, I ar gue
that the pandemic further advantaged higher SES couples financially and in the emotional
development of their relationship, because they were able to construct risk as instrumental rather
than constraining.
The resilience theme throughout this dissertation is likely a result of my sampling strategy ,
which screened for couples who were together at least six months at the time of interview , and
the project’ s cross-sectional design, which meant that I was not able to track whether couples
remained together long-term. Thus, all couples interviewed were successful enough to be intact
at the time of the interview , despite the challenges of COVID. This certainly limits the scope of
8 2
this project, but the theme of resilience at the height of COVID’ s uncertainty is still an important
sociological phenomenon to understand more deeply .
Prior research has shown mixed results for the pandemic’ s impact on relationship
satisfaction (W illiamson 2020; Nuru and Bruess 2021; V owels et al. 2021). This means it is still
important to have an in-depth exploration of the processes couples were using to successfully
navigate the pandemic’ s challenges, and the meanings couples constructed throughout these
processes. Studying couples who remained together long enough to get to know each other , and
weather the pandemic’ s crisis together , allowed me to do this.
Empirically , the three papers in this project shared themes of resilience and the construction
of meaning in relationships, but they also share a theoretical similarity: their contributions all
bridge dif ferent streams of literature together . Paper 1 is the first study to bridge the couples’
research on FTF and CMC integration (Baym, Zhang, and Lin 2004) with literature on
technology and time distortion (T urel and R. Cavagnaro 2019), to ar gue that time distortion
could possibly be another factor linking FTF+CMC integration with relationship closeness.
Paper 2 explores young adults’ relationships with their parents and partners at the same time in
order to find meanings of independence that were most salient for them in the midst of juggling
multiple roles. Finally , Paper 3 brings SES as a key risk factor (Payne, Brown-Iannuzzi, and
Hannay 2017; W ilkinson and Pickett 2006) into conversation with the literature on couples’ risk
negotiation (Mellini and Poglia Mileti 2022; Nelson 2020; Rance 2018), which had previously
considered financial resources between partners, but not the dif ferential impact of SES on
dif ferent couples’ experiences. While this dissertation primarily draws from and contributes to
the family sociology literature, its implications can also be used in psychology and
communication studies, making it useful for future scholars in my field of study and beyond.
8 3
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Abstract (if available)

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic is an unexpected, unprecedented global event that has revealed and exacerbated existing patterns in romantic relationships. Using in-depth interviews with 42 romantic partners (18 couples and 6 interviewees whose partners could not participate), this dissertation uses the pandemic as a case study to analyze these patterns, including (1) the unique ways that couples integrate digital and in-person communication to create closeness, (2) the challenge young adults face in balancing their commitments to their families and partners while becoming independent adults (3) the cumulative role of inequality as couples negotiate health and economic risk. I find that through these processes, couples re-solidified their romantic bonds, asserted independence by bridging their romantic and familial lives, and made decisions that further advantaged or disadvantaged them in terms of health, finances, and the development of their relationship. As they did this, couples have also (re)shaped meanings of time, independence, and risk. While this project is situated in the family sociology literature, it has interdisciplinary implications, particularly for research in social psychology and communication studies.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Shimada, Elisabeth Rose Pohaikealoha (author)

Core Title In health, in sickness: romantic relationships during the COVID-19 pandemic

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Sociology

Degree Conferral Date 2023-08

Publication Date 07/11/2023

Defense Date 06/14/2023

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag computer mediated communication,Couples,COVID-19,cumulative disadvantage,economic inequality,emerging adulthood,OAI-PMH Harvest,Relationships,risk negotiation,romance

Format theses (aat)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Hook, Jennifer (committee chair), Parreñas, Rhacel (committee chair), Finley, Chris (committee member), Owens, Ann (committee member), Smith-Greenaway, Emily (committee member)

Creator Email elisashimada@yahoo.com,eshimada@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC113263931

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Legacy Identifier etd-ShimadaEli-12073.pdf

Document Type Dissertation

Format theses (aat)

Rights Shimada, Elisabeth Rose Pohaikealoha

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