A feminist public sociology of the pandemic: Interviewing about a crisis, during a crisis

Abstract

Widespread school closures due to the coronavirus-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic have left US parents—especially mothers—doing increasing amounts of family labor as they oversee their children's remote learning. In this article, I reflect on the process of interviewing 112 US parents, primarily mothers, about their experiences of pandemic-related school closures, amidst the pandemic itself. These interviews were largely intensely emotional experiences. I reflect on the emotions of both respondents and researcher to argue that carrying out such interviews in the midst of a crisis can function as a form of care work. I propose the idea of a feminist public sociology of the pandemic that has three primary aims: bearing witness to the experiences of those impacted by the pandemic, making a record of those experiences, and helping scholars and the public to think about the pandemic sociologically, ideally in such a way that will aid in the creation of policy responses that address and reduce this suffering.