Social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic requires people to engage in new health behaviors that are public, monitored, and often contested. Parents are typically considered responsible for controlling their children’s behavior and instilling norms. We investigated how parents and teens managed teenagers’ social distancing behaviors. Analyzing longitudinal (2015–2020), dyadic qualitative interviews with teenagers and their parents in 20 families from two middle-class communities in which social distancing was normative, we found that preexisting health lifestyles were used to link social distancing behaviors to specific identities, norms, and understandings of health. The pandemic presented challenges resulting from contradictory threats to health, differing preferences, and conflicting social judgments. Parents responded to challenges by adhering to community norms and enforcing teens’ social distancing behaviors. They drew on preexisting, individualized health lifestyles as cultural tools to justify social distancing messages, emphasizing group distinctions, morality, and worth in ways that perpetuated inequalities.

COVID-19 大流行期间的社交距离要求人们采取公开、受监控且经常受到争议的新健康行为。父母通常被认为有责任控制孩子的行为并灌输规范。我们调查了父母和青少年如何管理青少年的社交疏远行为。通过对来自两个中产阶级社区的 20 个家庭的青少年及其父母进行纵向（2015-2020）双元定性访谈分析，我们发现，先前存在的健康生活方式被用来将社交距离行为与特定的身份、规范联系起来。 ，以及对健康的认识。这场大流行带来了由相互矛盾的健康威胁、不同的偏好和相互冲突的社会判断带来的挑战。父母通过遵守社区规范和强制青少年保持社交距离的行为来应对挑战。他们利用先前存在的个性化健康生活方式作为文化工具来证明社会疏远信息的合理性，强调群体差异、道德和价值，从而使不平等长期存在。