To survive the Covid-19 pandemic, families the world over are trying to strike balance between daily routines and other more emotionally-laden and inspirational activities that go well beyond their daily schedules in order to counter massive disruption to their everyday life, say researchers. For many families, life has become more precarious, anxious and accelerated.

"Rather than a combination of strategic activities and well-planned decisions, we found that when normality is disrupted abruptly, family care looks more like an intricate improvised 'dance'," said Dr Pilar Rojas Gaviria, Lecturer in Marketing at the University of Birmingham in the UK. Although there has been a lot of talk about how COVID-19 has "slowed down" family life, the study in the Journal of Marketing Management by researchers at the University of Birmingham, University of Melbourne and Adolfo Ibanez University in Chile argue that this is not the case for every family.