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COVID-19 EXPERIENCE IN NIGERIAN FAMILY SETTINGS: 

IMPLICATIONS FOR RESEARCHERS AND FAMILY COUNSELLORS. 

 

Rev. Kenny  Udumka, Cssp, NCC, LPC 

Pagosa Springs, Colorado, United States of America. 

 

Abstract 

It has become very important to clarify the pandemic era following different waves 

of COVID 19 in different places. This is also important because the pandemic does 

not seem to be over yet. Therefore, this paper focuses on the experiences of the 

pandemic in Nigerian family settings and how such experiences have implications 

for researchers and family counsellors. To briefly understand how the pandemic 

has been experienced with associated levels of stress in the family system demands 

a deep appreciation of how different individual members of families expressed 

their beliefs concerningCOVID-19, which reflected in their compliance or 

noncompliance to COVID-19restrictions in their families. In this case, the general 

system theory could become an important lens for researchers and family 

counsellors who may wish to understand how the beliefs of some individual family 

members and their willingness to comply or not to comply with restrictions could 

become sources of increased levels of stress in the entire family system. 

 

Introduction 

To understand the impact of the pandemic on the Nigerian family structure, it will 

be important to make a brief remark on the meaning of family in context. There is 

every need to make a shift from the traditional understanding of family as a system 

of relationships among people who share blood ties to current conceptualizations. 

In this regard, Whall (1996) defined the family as a self-defined group of two or 

more individuals who are, or are not, bound by blood ties or law, but function in a 

way that makes them feel they represent a family. This definition implies a very 

reflective consideration of various constellations of families (Årestedt, Persson & 

Benzein, 2014) which usually generates a unique system of relationships especially 

in a place like Nigeria where family settings could be categorized as families with 

one mother, multiple mothers, and the extended family. 

 

According to Priest(2021), the understanding of family as a system of relationships 

was derived from the general system theory (Bertalanffy, 1969). The general 

systems theory (Bertalanffy, 1969) uncovers the principles behind the combination 

of interacting units which are known as sub-systems and their relationships to 

generate a new and unique system. In the light of family system theory, which is a 

derivative of the general system theory, the family in this context represents this 

new and unique system of relationships. Therefore, a more comprehensive 

understanding of the nature of the family is not complete without the appreciation 

of how the individual units or individuals that make up the family influence the 

nature and experiences of the family during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The immediate effect of the COVID-19on the family system are grouped into two 



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in this paper which include the different beliefs about the nature of the pandemic, 

and the effect of COVID-19 on the family structure and its implications for 

researchers and family counsellors. 

 

Different beliefs about the covid-19 in the family 

Before any discussions on how different beliefs about the pandemic may differ 

among members of different families, a brief understanding of what family 

structure in Nigeria may look like is important.  Because Nigeria is poly-cultural in 

nature, family structures or systems may be dependent on the different cultures 

exhibited. For instance, in the Igbo family structure, we have to take into 

consideration three kinds of family settings: Family with one mother which 

consists of father, one mother, children, dependents, and relatives; family with 

multiple mothers common in polygamous families, with father, two or more 

mothers, children, dependents and relatives; and the extended family setting in 

which father, mother or mothers, children, in-laws, from both sides, friends, and 

other relatives all live together as one household (Obindigbo, 2015). In the 

extended family settings, senior male figures and relatives are usually called uncles 

while females are called aunties. 

 

In the context of the pandemic, a major point of interest is how certain families 

could be made up of some people who believe and those who would not believe in 

the reality of the pandemic. In this case, it would be difficult for the family as a 

unique system of individuals to either apply social distancing to the fullest or 

exclude and ostracize those who refused to observe social distancing from the 

family. So, living in a family with some people who did not believe in the 

seriousness and reality of the pandemic was a source of stress that posed great 

danger to family members who believed in the reality of the pandemic and to the 

entire family as a system. Therefore, this situation and associated increase in 

family stress has implications for both researchers and family counsellors. Lack of 

belief in the seriousness of the pandemic has been attributed to different 

conspiracy theories and individual desires to differ from what other people believe. 

 

These beliefs in different conspiracy theories put both the individual and family at 

risk. Evidences suggest that belief in conspiracy theories undermines engagement 

in pro-health behaviours and support for public health policies (Earnshaw, 

2020).Some people believed that it was part of a government plan to use COVID-

19 to transmit bioweapons into people as vaccines. While some thought it was 

coming from 5G cell towers (Allyn, 2020), others thought it was part of the plans 

of some pharmaceutical companies to make profit through the spread of COVID-

19. Some people also believed that the virus is not worse than the usual strain of 

flu people take shots for during flu seasons. Those who did not know anybody who 

had contacted the virus or died from it claimed it never existed for them. 

According to Muller (2020), some researchers have linked belief in conspiracy 

theories to the need for uniqueness. In other words, people want to feel powerful 

and special as though they are in possession of important information that other 



Udumka                                                    COVID-19 Experience in Nigeria Family … 

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people do not have. Some of these conspirators and those who believed them are 

part of family systems where there were family members who took the situation 

very seriously and were willing to comply with government restrictions as well as 

those who either refused to believe or wished to appear different. In this case, the 

hesitations of certain family members to believe in the reality of the virus and their 

corresponding nonchalant attitudes towards the restrictions put in place to curb the 

rate of infections had the capacity to increase the experiences of stress in the entire 

family system. 

 

The stressors may vary from family to family. They include fear of infection and 

fear of coming into contact with objects or surfaces contaminated with the corona 

virus; fear of socio-economic impacts of the pandemic; fear of foreigners in case 

they are infected; pandemic-related compulsive checking and reassurance-seeking; 

pandemic-related traumatic stress symptoms. Researchers have implicated these 

stressors as the origin of a severe form of a syndrome called the COVID Stress 

Disorder, which is regarded as a pandemic-related adjustment disorder (Taylor, 

2021).  

 

Managing the Pandemic in family settings 

The spread of COVID-19had nothing to do with believing or not believing in the 

reality of the pandemic. Experiences have shown that some people who did not 

believe that it was real believed when they were hit by the pandemic. To reduce 

the rate of infections, social distancing was introduced, especially with people who 

were not members of the families. The idea of seeing people live in families as 

members of a safer social circle did not exclude the possibility that one or some 

members of the family may not have believed in the existence of COVID-19 as a 

serious pandemic. To deal with this, some countries like the United State of 

America recognized the need to protect senior citizens in the nursing homes from 

their loved ones with physical contact restrictions. Therefore, in as much as it is 

difficult for regular families where people lived together to control the in-and-out 

of individual members of their families, it seemed difficult for people living in 

such families to completely avoid being in contact with those infected with the 

virus. This is becauseCOVID-19 has a pervasive effect on families and the 

individuals that make up the families (Lebow, 2020). This situation put families in 

danger of being victims of the disbelief of those who did not believe in the reality 

of COVID-19and related consequences since social distancing was only easier 

among people who did not have to live in families together or where every family 

member shared the same belief.  

 

Lack of belief in the reality of the pandemic by some members of families, 

increased anxiety among those who believed in the reality of COVID-19. Beyond 

the refusal to accept this reality in a family setting by some family members, there 

are other emerging realities that were not thought of among scholars, 

psychologists, and behavioural health experts as serious and possible triggers of 

stress in the family system with the experience of lockdown. Other family 



                                                                       Aquino Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 1(2), 2021 

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variables such as changes in income, lack of places to eat, for those who dislike 

cooking, were sources of stress in family settings. Another emerging reality is the 

effect of an increased time together. It is possible that increased time together in 

the family had its positive effects like increased satisfaction in husband-wife, 

father-child, mother-child, and sibling-sibling relationships. It is also possible that 

some families experienced decrease in satisfaction in these relationship patterns as 

a result of increased time and inability to escape “family jail”. The consequences 

of these negative influences which demand more insights from researchers, pose 

new challenges for family counsellors, not only in raising questions on the 

influence of increased time together on the rate of family conflicts, divorce, 

intimate partner violence, and family violence increase (Lebow, 2020), but also on 

best counselling approaches in a COVID-19or post COVID-19contextual family 

counselling. 

 

Therefore, the anxiety from COVID-19experiences in families, lead to increased 

levels of stress in the entire family system. All the different forms of stress 

engendered by the pandemic consequently and no doubt elevate the prevalence of 

individual anxiety and psychopathology (McFarlane, 2016). Talking of 

psychopathology here, one may not be interested in descriptive psychopathology 

which tries to offer the precise categorization and definition of the experiences of 

the family members, but in the explanatory psychopathology which attempts to 

explain symptoms of distorted mental and behavioural health of people living in 

families as a result of the pandemic based on the family system theory as a 

theoretical model (Oyebode, 2018) which is a derivative of the general system 

theory (Bertalanffy, 1969).  

 

Implications for researchers and family counsellors 

Irrespective of the positive or negative effects of the pandemic on the family 

system, the general experience has raised the consciousness level of individual 

family members, psychologists, social workers and family counsellors directly or 

indirectly on the reality of the family as a system. The general system theory 

(Bertalanffy, 1969) on which the family system theory is basedprovides practical 

and scholarly explanations of how subsystems irrespective of the particular nature 

of their composition act together to form a new system that is different from the 

system. Researchers and family counsellors can use this theoretical model to 

understand how a more focused attention and increased awareness on the family as 

a system can offer a better and easier understanding of the contributions of each 

member of the family towards a unique family structure that becomes different in 

function and character from individual family members.  

 

Therefore, looking at the characteristics of a family in context as a product of the 

characteristics of individual members of the family in Nigeria offers researchers 

and family counsellors the opportunity to appreciate the need for increased 

attention on different kinds of stress triggered by the pandemic among the 

individual family members which shapes the nature of the family. For the family 



Udumka                                                    COVID-19 Experience in Nigeria Family … 

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counsellors, this knowledge will enhance the understanding of the need to 

individualize the family stress since what the family suffers is an accumulation of 

different stress coping strategies that are either positive or negative among the 

family members. So, dealing with the effects of the COVID-19on the family in 

counseling  sessions starts with the effects of COVID-19on individual members of 

the family. This suggests an adoption of the general system theory framework. 

 

To adopt the lens of the general system theory as a framework, the researcher or 

the family counselor in Nigeria must be contextual in bracketing prior 

preconceptions, for instance, those based on the views of the Greek philosopher 

Aristotle that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. There must be a 

conscious separation of the meaning of the “whole” and the “individual” as in 

mathematical and some psychological constructs. This is because in mathematics, 

the whole is equal to the sum of all the parts, while in gestalt psychology the whole 

is different from the parts of the whole. This view used among gestalt 

psychologists to explain the relationship among things perceived in the perception 

system could make people think that it shares the same view with the general 

system theory where the whole system is also perceived as different from the 

individual parts. To differentiate the two views in contexts and application while 

focusing on the effect of the pandemic on families, the meaning of the “whole is 

different from individual parts” in gestalt theory means that one cannot understand 

the parts of something to understand the whole. But in a different manner, the 

application of general system theory enables an understanding of the whole family 

system from the understanding of the individual parts represented by the individual 

experiences of the family members. Therefore, after bracketing preconceptions 

based on Aristotle and gestalt psychologists, researchers can conveniently use the 

principles of the general system theory to understand how individual stress and 

pathologies increased family dysfunctions that contextually redefined families with 

the advent of COVID-19. This has great implications for researchers, especially 

family counsellors who should start with individual counselling first in a family 

counselling protocol. 

 

Conclusion. 

Until now, reactions to the pandemic have been conceptualized as what mostly 

concerned individuals without much known focus on how it could reshape the 

function of the family as a unique system. This paper has therefore, attempted a 

brief explanation of how Nigerian family systems may differ based on culture. The 

paper also explained briefly how COVID-19 experiences in Nigerian family 

settings based on different beliefs about the pandemic may have affected 

compliance to COVID-19restrictions.For an understanding of the impact of 

individual beliefs, and acceptance of different conspiracy theories and their effects 

on the stress levels of families in Nigeria during the pandemic, this paper 

encourages researchers and counsellors to adopt the lens of the general system 

theory to see how the stress of individual family members lead to stressed families. 

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                                                                       Aquino Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 1(2), 2021 

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