Adolescence Crisis, Covid-19 and Reorganization of the Family System

Abstract

This article has as interest the crisis of adolescence in a context of confinement. The Adolescent Crisis is a temporary and normally transitory situation, characterized by a set of risky behaviors, which reflect not the existence of a mental disorder, but rather a difficulty in adapting to the puberty. School runaways, consumption of toxic products, risk-taking and accidents (especially traffic accidents), violence and transgressive behaviors, eating disorders, opposition to parental authority, are part of this picture. This “developmental” crisis betrays the adolescent’s desire to assert themselves and to define a personal identity, helped by their cognitive potentialities. To flourish in this direction, the adolescent needs space for expression, privacy, a spatiotemporal universe of his own. However, the coronavirus pandemic, with the confinement it imposes, forces adolescents to rub shoulders with parental authority all day long, which they normally underestimate. Isn’t this relational promiscuity likely to exacerbate the adolescent crisis? The objective of this study is to identify the specificity of the parent-adolescent relationship in times of confinement. To achieve this, we subjected four adolescents from the city of Maroua, as well as their parents, to semi-structured interviews. The speeches thus collected, after analysis, revealed relational difficulties, which affect the balance of the family system. But the situation is far from alarming. Indeed, parents tend to seize the opportunity that confinement offers them to get closer to their child, and share new experiences with them. Confinement then becomes a symbolic space conducive to the psycho-emotional development of the adolescent, through a reorganization of co-constructed interpersonal relationships. This situation, if it is well received and well interpreted by the adolescent, constitutes a barrier measure to the possible installation of psychopathological difficulties, which will have to be managed clinically after passing the Covid-19.