The role of external stressors in changing family relationships, as well as the influence of COVID-19 infection threat, lockdown impact on the psychological state of the family, their behaviour and interaction are discussed in the paper. The analysis of foreign and Russian studies on this topic is presented. The authors describe the influence of forced, more intense family communication and interaction on spouses` and child-parents` relationship in different types of families. They focus on the psycho-emotional state of family members, their stress level and coping specifics. Families with high risk of distress consequences are identified – families with “vulnerable” members, including elderly relatives and those who require special care and treatment. The positive meaning of emotional support and intra-family consistency of positions about a lockdown has been found to reduce distress emotional manifestations in a pandemic situation. New empirical norms of the express coping scale Brief Cope (Charles S. Carver, 1987) are given for a total sample of 554 people.