Children in the Midst of Covid-19: a Hidden Misery

The whole world is experiencing a turmoil. Since Covid-19 broke in December 2019, a lot of things have considerably changed. 

Ancient philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus said that the only thing constant in life is change. If life were a river, then all of its curves and streams would all be part of the ride. What we need to do is to simply enjoy the ride. Yet for cases where the ride is extremely wild, just like how it is right now, most of us find it hard to extract delight out of the situation. 

We all feel deeply saddened by the death of the pandemic's victims, which at this point have surpassed 275.000 cases, not that the lesser number of victims makes the whole circumstances any less appaling. We empathize with people who don't have the privilege to stay home during the pandemic and those who have lost their jobs and thus struggle to make ends meet.  

But in the midst of a disaster this big, even those who we think are doing just fine may in fact aren't. We may notice that a lot of children are complaining about not going to school. They can no longer meet their friends. Even some of them face learning difficulties due to the novel learning methods implemented during school closure. At a glance, these issues are merely small childish yelps. But turns out, the impacts are a lot more profound. 

The big changes 

There are two most prominent changes that we now experience on a daily basis which also apply to children (individuals under the age of 18). The first one being that the majority of the global population are currently under governments' orders to stay at home. According to UNICEF, 99% of children worldwide live in one of the countries with some form of movement restrictions in place due to COVID-19. Nation-wide school closures are enacted in 188 countries and in consequence, children now learn from home.

The second big change is the dismal fact that the whole world economy is running headlong into the worst recession since the Great Depression with the global economic growth falling to -3%, as projected by the World Economic Forum. This means businesses stop expanding or even producing which leads to a humongous employee cut down, driving up the unemployment rate in many countries.

The trap of heightened abuse

School closure means that now we have children learning from home and that we have them staying home for a protracted time, if not all the time. For children whose parents or guardians initially don't work, are currently working from home. or are unemployed since Covid-19, this means that they are continuously in the same place as their parents. 

While this may lead to some family relationships becoming tighter, it also means that children will spend significantly longer time with the main perpetrators of child abuse-parents. According to the US Department of Health and Human Service, 77% of the States' child maltreatment cases in 2018 were done by parents. This includes physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, as well as neglect.