Vol-7 Issue-1 2021 IJARIIE-ISSN(O)-2395-4396 13612 www.ijariie.com 945 Buhay Estudyante: The Lives of Students from Broken Families Amidst the Pandemic Janz Glenn Lanozo 1 Lauren Grace Tabieros 2 Ella Mae Solmiano 3 Niña Ercie Paras 4 Jhoselle Tus 5 1-4 Research Students, Filipino Psychology 5 Research Professor, Filipino Psychology Jesus is Lord Colleges Foundation, Inc., Bocaue, Bulacan, Philippines ABSTRACT Family is the most basic unit of society, and the foundation of it is the parents, marriage, and offspring. Everyone longs for a place to call home and a healthy family both in mind and body relationship. Generally, people’s view of complete families has married parents with children. Even so, the case is not always like that. Broken families are not uncommon; rather, it is familiar and often encountered around us. This study’s primary goal is to assess the lived experiences of students from broken families amidst the pandemic, specifically, it sought the following objectives: (1) to describe the positive experiences of students from broken families, (2) to describe the challenges of the students from broken families experience and why do they consider those as challenges, (3) to describe the effects on academic performance of the students coming from broken families. The study utilized Interpretative Phenomenology Analysis (IPA) with the 10 participants ages of 15 to 24 years old from a broken family. Based on the study, the findings are the following: (1) Most of the students from broken families are greatly challenged by financial, emotional, mental, social, and behavioral problems that contribute to their poor academic performance. (2) Most of the students that have divorced (separated) parents are inattentive and limited. They rarely provide time, care, and financial support for student’s daily needs and academic fees. (3) Students from broken families cope with being independent and optimistic in their situation. (4) Students from broken families gain positive experiences despite the traumatic family background, especially personal growth and building stronger relationships. Keywords: Sikolohiyang Pilipino, Broken family, Family, Pandemic 1. INTRODUCTION Family is the most basic unit of society, and the foundation of it is the parents, marriage, and offsprings. Everyone longs for a place to call home and a healthy family both in mind and body relationship. Generally, people’s view of complete families has married parents with children. Even so, the case is not always like that. Thus, broken families are not uncommon; rather, it is familiar and often encountered around us (Saikia, 2017). Although, with just issues from job loss, unemployment stress, or financial problems, even if the family members are distant from each other, it is not enough to be called a broken family. There should be problems out of misinterpretation, maltreatment, denial, etc. Furthermore, that is how broken families come into existence. According to Wang and Schofer (2018), on the report of divorce percentage from eighty – four countries worldwide, ranging from 1970 – 2008, broken families are sometimes the results of the dissolution of marriage. Thus, psychologists usually utilize factors from the individual ’s background, such as their educational attainment, job descriptions, earnings, and at the age, they got married. However, they looked at social factors that might result in marriage into a divorce, for instance, a country’s economic growth. They also researched the values and culture of a country, such as the opinion in human rights and discrimination on gender equity – whether they affect the rates of divorce. They gathered on the analyzed data from the 2.6 average growth rate of divorced on every 1000 married people; it swelled to 5.5 averages just in the span of more or less four decades (Wang & Schofer, 2018). The situation where a broken family happens because of nullity of marriage is also increasing in the Philippines due to the lack of divorce law since other than the Vatican; the Philippines is the sole nation where divorce is illegal. As reported by Abalos (2017), in the year 1960’s, the number of divorced or separated in the Philippines is already 28,988 Filipino men and 52,187 Filipino women. The amount was intensely raised by the year 2010 with 330,253 men and 565,802 women. Factors included in the report were growing up with urban poverty or those generally referred to as low urban living together without marriage, religion, and ethnicity. Moreover, educational attainment also contributed to the factors in the Philippines. Furthermore, due to the COVID – 19 pandemic, the living conditions of families have drastically changed. Previous studies state that students are inactive in studying when in-home isolation as compared to