Abstract
Objective: This paper investigates the impact of the 2020 Covid-19 related Spring Lockdown in Italy on families practicing shared physical custody (SPC) arrangements for their children.
 Background: Those family configurations partly challenge the dominant 'mother as main carer model' that characterizes Italian society. Here, we consider the lockdown as a "challenge-trial" to analyze the strategies that these families have developed to cope with lockdown, and to reveal the overarching structures that contributed to shape this experience of lockdown.
 Method: We draw on semi-structured interviews with 19 parents (9 fathers and 10 mothers), part of 12 families practicing SPC.
 Results: We propose a typology of custody re-organizations during lockdown and how this affected the division of parental involvement based on a) change/no change in sleepover calendars in favor of mother/father; and b) similar/different arrangements for siblings – a new practice that emerged and also has implications for the division of childcare between parents. Four types are identified where we emphasize new parenting practices and the role played by material housing configurations, relations and tensions between family members, as well as balancing work, school and childcare.
 Conclusion: We highlight the usefulness of applying a "challenge-trial" lens to the study of family life under lockdown, and the need to complexify research on gender equality in shared parenting and on sibling relationships in post-divorce families.
Highlights
This paper focuses on the challenges of the Covid-19 related Spring 2020 Lockdown in Italy for separated families living in the Turin area (Piedmont) and who were practicing shared physical custody arrangements (SPC) for their children when this lockdown was declared.Italy was the first European country to be severely hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, with the first confirmed cases of community transmission found on February 21st in the North of the country
Objective: This paper investigates the impact of the 2020 Covid-19 related Spring Lockdown in Italy on families practicing shared physical custody (SPC) arrangements for their children
Additional questions emerged: what impact did lockdown have on those family arrangements? How did these families adapt to the lockdown situation? And what do these adaptations tell us about the structural factors and inequalities shaping post-divorce family life in Italy, a country still characterized by strong gender inequalities and women’s prominent role in caring for children (Naldini & Solera 2018)? These are the questions we address in this paper
Summary
This paper focuses on the challenges of the Covid-19 related Spring 2020 Lockdown in Italy for separated families living in the Turin area (Piedmont) and who were practicing shared physical custody arrangements (SPC) for their children when this lockdown was declared. From May 4th on, lockdown measures were progressively relaxed – industry and retail progressively reopened, and movements across municipalities were allowed again for work or health reasons, as well as for visits to relatives. During this so-called ‘Second Phase’ (Beria & Lunkar 2021), the government announced that schools would remain closed until September. We explain how the families we met adapted their custody arrangements during lockdown, and the implications those (re)organizations had for fathers’ involvement in parenting
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