Kinship roles, ties and relationships with family members facing the global crisis

Résumé En

Family ties have the particularity of being both bonds (ascripted, unbreakable, normative) and relationships (achieved, fluctuating, with contextualized practices... or not). They may provide resources (support, affection) but also constraints (duties, mental burdens). These links both connect and bind.The COVID crisis and the resulting confinement have brutally revealed both the strengths and weaknesses of these family ties and relationships. Uncertainty, anxiety, needs for support were exacerbated while the resources residing in social interactions (modalities of speech, expression of affectivity, gestures of sharing, supports of trust...) were less accessible, less accomplished.The effects of this crisis were very contrasted and they highlighted the ambivalences of the family bond: at the same time solid and fragile, resource and constraint, source of identity and denial. Couples have been strengthened or separated, parents and children learned to live differently together, roles have been challenged. In addition, political and moral fractures have shifted families along new divides.Based on the "VICO-life in confinement" survey carried out over three quantitative panel survey waves since April 2020 and a qualitative survey in April-May 2021, some analysis of the consequences of the crisis and confinement on family ties and relationships will be presented.