Why Is COVID-19 And Social Distancing Harder For Different Communities In Which Larger Families Are Key For Survival?
South Asian families are strongly reliant on relatives to look after the elderly rather than using care homes or private care. This is seen as a way of showing respect and duty. A Twitter poll I carried out, asking whether ‘South Asian’s believe that it is their responsibility to look after the elderly in their family’, found that 86% of 21 voters agreed with this statement.
Many may not live with the elderly in their family, and they may travel out to see them. However, social distancing rules can make this responsibility challenging to fulfil. So, what happens to the elderly? What impact is social distancing having on family relations?
Regardless of ethnicity, many elderly people have suffered because of COVID 19, whether that be illness or the loneliness they have had to face. Countless South Asians elderly are left to care for themselves during this time, due to their reluctance to go into more professional care. They may also become lonely. Given the weight that supervision of the elderly holds in the South Asian community, they may feel that they are not respected or loved as this duty is being neglected.
Taking their age into account, they may not know how to care for themselves. The further implications of this are that they may not know how to get the help they need, like calling for a doctor, for example. This leads them to feel helpless and nervous about what their health may be coming to. Consequently, they may get ill or their current condition may worsen.
As I have previously mentioned, caring for the elderly is very important in the South Asian community. Firstly, the adults and children may be viewed as not respecting their elderly relatives should they fail to carry out their said duty. This can cause conflict for some.
There is also the inconvenience of trying to work around the pandemic, which has changed everyone’s lives and forced us all to adapt to a new way of living. It is not unusual for elderly members of any family to help with childcare, that may involve very little or no hard work. Social distancing guidelines cause a disruption to this, which means many parents are faced with new challenges of having to get used to looking after their children on a more frequent basis.
The elderly are unlikely to be familiar with how technology works, which means they do not have the advantage that we have of instantaneous communication. This leads them to have little or no contact with the members of their family or their friends, thus increasing their loneliness.
It will not be surprising to know that many people are deliberately not following social distancing guidelines, from all kinds of communities. This could be because their situation is so helpless that they have no choice but to resort to disobeying the guidelines.
There are, of course, many people who are complying with social distancing rules. Although many may not have any other alternatives to provide care for the elderly, so they may be forced to break the rules. If they do not, then the elderly will be left to attempt to cope on their own. It is important that we social distance, but it is also crucial that we do not leave people to suffer alone during such unprecedented times.
I thought it would be useful to share my own thoughts on this as the younger generations of South Asians feel the responsibility to look after the elderly of their family.
It is essential to stick to social distancing rules, regardless of how inconvenient they may be. We must remember that these rules have been put in place to keep us, and the people we care about, safe. The elderly are the most vulnerable to COVID 19, so we need to ensure their safety and prevent the spread of the virus.
Many south Asians may not realise it, but they are fulfilling their duty of care by social distancing from their loved ones.
Even so, has Boris Johnson failed to be considerate of people who carry out their lives differently to most of Britain’s population? He has been unable to come up with a way to ensure the elderly of the South Asian community are cared for in a way that suits them during this quarantine period. Our prime minister must ensure that we are safe, but it is just as important that he ensures we are happy during this time too.
Written by Halimah Begum
Hi, my name is Halimah Begum. I am an 18 year old law student from Birmingham. I started freelance writing as it was a way for me to commit to the responsibilities of being a student but also continue on with my hobbies. Hope you enjoy my piece!