Bio: PhD Womens and gender sexuality studies
Dr. Lindsey Feitz is a Teaching Professor and Director of the Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies Program at the University of Denver, where she has led interdisciplinary programming since 2017 and taught since 2012. Her previous publications explore the militarization of gender and sexuality in the U.S. military and the transnational history of Avon Cosmetics. Her work employs intersectional analysis to examine how gender intersects with race, class, and nationality in various contexts. Her current research on single motherhood during the COVID-19 pandemic combines autoethnographic methodology with feminist policy analysis to understand how care systems function and fail. She holds a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Kansas and is the solo mother of a busy and beautiful little boy.
Abstract:
This autoethnographic reflection examines my experience as a single mother and professor during the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic (March-May 2020). Drawing on feminist scholarship and personal journals, I analyze how the pandemic created a “cascading failure of infrastructure,” in which support systems that mothers rely on collapsed simultaneously. My breaking point was driving nine hours through the night with my seven-month-old son after eighteen days of solo parenting, crystallizing the impossible situation many mothers faced during lockdowns. When schools and daycares closed, mothers became society’s default care workers, stepping in to fill work traditionally performed by multiple providers while maintaining professional responsibilities. This crisis exposed the vulnerability of childcare infrastructures and the essential yet chronically undervalued role that mothers’ labor plays in sustaining families and communities. The pandemic demonstrated that moving forward requires both individual adaptations and structural changes, including universal childcare, paid family leave, and workplace flexibility that recognizes care as a collective responsibility rather than defaulting to women as primary caregivers.
Keywords: COVID-19, motherhood, care work, autoethnography, gender inequality, childcare infrastructure
When Care Infrastructures Collapse: Single Mothering Through COVID-19
- JourMS - 