Child care and COVID: Precarious communities in distanced times

Abstract

Drawing from an analysis of responses to COVID affecting the ECCE sector in the US, including the narratives of early childhood educators, we engage with several questions. These include: How is care work with children constructed and affected by COVID-19? How might current responses and policies be understood through the lens of social citizenship and the collective/the individual? How do these issues reflect the precarity of the ECCE sector? How are embodied and emotional aspects of care work manifesting in early educator/caregiver lives in the time of the pandemic? Who is caring for the caregivers and what care may be needed? How can we re-imagine the care of ourselves, and in relation to an ethics of care for the other?