The Iranian Mothers᾿ lived Cooperation Experience During Covid-19 Pandemic

The present study aimed to explain mothers’ cooperation experience during the COVID-19 pandemic. The research population included all Iranian mothers. The participants included 16 Iranian mothers living in Ahvaz whom were selected by purposive sampling as sample. The study was a qualitative phenomenology. The data were collected by in-depth interviews with open-ended questions and analyzed by Colaizzi’s seven-step method. Finally, three main themes and nine sub-themes were obtained. The first main theme of marital harmony included (facilitation in household affairs, emotional support for each other, care during illness, financial and job support), the second main theme of kinship companionship included (mutual support with the family of origin, strengthening family relationships), the third main theme social empathy included (meeting material needs, meeting emotional and care needs, experiencing the joy of cooperation) were extracted. The results showed that there was the cooperation experience among women in the pandemic situation, both in the family center and on wider level of the society. Furthermore, the coincidence between the pandemic as a tension-causing event and a positive phenomenon such as cooperation could depict scenes of exchanging pure humanitarian experiences. In fact, cooperation was one of pure human experiences, whose place in the history of Iranian people has been known since the distant past, and now it is considered a part of the social and cultural heritage of this land.