Family practices and strategies of middle-class teachers in Argentina in the context of COVID-19: transformations and discomforts in the face of care processes and labor relations

LEILA MARTINA PASSERINO; DENISE ZENKLUSEN

Reinventing the Family in Uncertain Times. Education, Policy and Social Justice

Bloomsbury Publishing

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2023; p. 1 - 24

The experience initiated in the context of COVID-19 in Argentina entailed various transformations in labor relations and care processes, producing disruptions and changes in family practices. Among the educational field professions, teaching experienced tensions and (over)demands of paid and unpaid work with the greatest difficulty. It is an activity that despite not having been considered essential, did not admit any discontinuities and, at a certain point, revealed the sexual structure of the sexual and generic division of domestic and care work, discussed by feminisms, but now highlighted and lived with greater intensity with consequences in their own family forms. In this direction, we inquire about family practices and strategies based on the testimony of middle-class heterosexual women teachers, of different civil status (married, separated, living with their partners) with children under age 12. The analysis focuses on gender inequalities, limitations for work development, as well as imperatives, concerns, discomforts and emotions that mediate the experiences initiated in the context of a pandemic, and that participate in the normative constructions of the family, with differential impact on women.