[en] In March 2020, the WHO declared the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus a “pandemic”. To reduce the risk of contamination, the Belgian government has ordered a strict lockdown characterized by social distancing and restrictive isolation measures. As a result of these governmental lockdown measures and the COVID-19 pandemic, most people’s work and social lives were restricted and people were confined to their homes and to the people with whom they lived. This pandemic has profoundly affected families’ daily lives and created multiple daily challenges. One important challenge has been maintaining well-functioning intimate relationships. So, the influence of the lockdown on the intimate relationships seems to be of great importance for social and health policies and needs to be examined in the current symposium. The first presentation (Schokkenbroek, UGent) will identify which couple’s relationship aspects were under strain during the pandemic by considering gender-differences. The second presentation (Galdiolo, UMONS) will examine the trajectory of couple satisfaction during the lockdown with a dyadic perspective. The third presentation (Woine, UCLouvain) will investigate the sociodemographic and situational factors to predict parental burnout during the lockdown. The last presentation (Verhelst, UGent) will describe potentially important factors that could go together with differences in the relational and individual well-being of Belgian couples during COVID-19.
