Paper short abstract:

The disruption of formal and informal childcare arrangements has intensified working mothers multiple responsibilities during the COVID-19 social restrictions in Italy and US. We also discuss moral subjectivities arising from mothers’ solidarity networks.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on a comparative virtual ethnography, we explore how the disruption of formal and informal childcare arrangements has intensified working mothers multiple responsibilities during the COVID-19 social restrictions in Italy and US. We also discuss the resources that mothers have mobilized to create a network of social support in the organization of care.

Our study illustrates the centrality of mothers’ moral subjectivities to deal with the pandemic as care leaders. Organic forms of caring emerged to create spaces of solidarity for people to heal, forging emotional ties, awareness, and participation.

Financialized capitalist societies created an institutional basis for new forms of women’s subordination, often silenced in political discourses and maintained in the domestic sphere. More than ever, the pandemic magnified a ‘crisis of care’ that must be understood structurally. We highlight the need for a massive gender-egalitarian reorganization of social-reproductive activities, particularly birthing and raising children, for care duties and moral subjectivities to be more of a central concern.