Family in the Time of COVID-19: Conflict Zone or Resilience Factor?

Right from the start of the COVID-19 crisis, families were confronted with a host of entirely new challenges. Phases of general lockdown in Germany and repeated quarantine periods brought family members into closer physical and organizational proximity. Questions on the compatibility of paid work and family care work attracted scrutiny from the beginning of the crisis. Lengthy periods of homeschooling in Germany and a high infection rate here in the federal state of Saxony compelled a large proportion of parents and children to repeatedly engage with the challenges entailed in organizing learning at home for sustained periods. German bodies concerned with child and youth welfare rightly called attention to the increasing numbers of problematic situations that emerged as a result and the intensity of conflicts associated with them in families that had already been disadvantaged and under pressure before the pandemic. Valid empirical research results on the development of conflicts in families under the conditions of the pandemic were clearly urgently needed. The “KonFa” research project (“Conflicts in families during the COVID-19 pandemic”) accordingly aimed to contribute to closing this research gap, specifically by examining developments in the state of Saxony.