Fragile Sorge: Zumutungen und Konflikte während der Covid-19-Pandemie

During the Covid-19 pandemic, medical and nursing care in hospitals was at times the focus of public attention. As a result of the partly very high hospitalisation rates of people infected with Covid-19, wards had to be relocated or closed, scheduled procedures were postponed and the staff shortages, which were already virulent before the pandemic, led to increased demands for the medical staff. Furthermore, nurses and doctors with smaller children had to deal with school and kindergarten closures and had to find ways to manage childcare. The article analyses how parents working in hospitals were able to ensure the care of their children during the pandemic and which hospital and governmental support measures proved to be particularly suitable to relieve the burden on employees with care obligations during the pandemic. In our article, we argue that during the Covid-19 pandemic, the long-discussed crisis of reproduction and care became clearly visible. This crisis is primarily stabilised by women, whose care ethos is used as a free resource. Our contribution is based on findings from 36 guided interviews with hospital workers in Germany and Austria within the research project "Double Fragility: The Care Crisis in the Corona Crisis".