How Teen–Parent Relationships Changed during the Pandemic Period. Teenagers Talk about Themselves

COVID-19 has had an indirect impact on families’ daily lives: the restrictive measures to limit its spread changed family routines and affected the quality of parent-adolescent relationships. Some research examined changes in parenting and parent–child relationship quality, but there is a lack within scientific literature about what is the adolescents’ specific vision about the qualitative changes of their teen–parent relationships during the pandemic period. Teens’ qualitative descriptions of relationships with parents are the focus of the explorative research presented in this paper. Fifty-three Italian adolescents described how their family relationships changed during the lockdown (March–May 2020). Most of them describe an increase in the quality of their relationships with parents and relatives and perceive the lockdown as an occasion to grow and to learn about the complex aspects of life. Instead, those who perceived the lockdown as a traumatic period describe a difficult and conflictual domestic setting during their forced isolation at home. Findings show the peculiar resilient competence of adolescents in elaborating stressful situations.