Increased Childcare Demands during the Covid-19 Pandemic: Care as a Burden or an Opportunity?

The article focuses on how parents of school and younger children experienced school closures associated with the Covid-19 pandemic in the Czech Republic. Using an intersectional approach in qualitative research, we examine how parents coped with the increased demands of childcare and how their perception of childcare changed during the pandemic. More gener-ally, we ask whether the pandemic situation was an opportunity for greater recognition and valuation of care. We present an analysis of serial qualita-tive interviews with 32 solo mothers and 19 parents living in couples that were conducted between the spring of 2020 and the summer of 2021. Parents had a both positive and negative experience of care during the Covid-19 pan-demic. The first school closure in the spring of 2020 was perceived as a rather positive opportunity to step outside the course of everyday life. However, as the pandemic continued, the long-term negative effects that the increased care duties during lockdown had on people and especially mothers became appar-ent: a worsening labour market position, a deteriorating economic situation, and an increasing dependence of women on male breadwinners or on the social support system. The pandemic highlighted the paradox of reproduc-tive work in late capitalism and showed how childcare has no market value in itself. Although in the first period of the pandemic parents experienced care to some extent as an opportunity, a source of meaning, and a rediscovered value, overall the pandemic did not lead to a greater recognition or valuation of care in society.