Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2022, 58(5): 477-507 | DOI: 10.13060/csr.2022.027

Why Teachers Do Not Take Child Sick Leave? Emotional Strategies, Micropolitics, and the Self-Conception of Teachers with Small Children in a Pandemic

Magdalena Mouralová, Eva M. Hejzlarová

Fakulta sociálních věd UK, Praha

Czechia had one of the longest school lockdowns during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021. Teachers with small children consequently faced a number of emotional dilemmas that primarily stemmed from the conflict between their role as a teacher and their role as a parent, which unfolded in the home as the one and only space in which to perform work, family care, and self-care. The paper is organised around the question of why teachers in this difficult situation did not take advantage of child sick leave, a public policy measure that could have helped them to reduce this conflict and to care for their children and their own mental health. In this study we draw on research into the emotional dimensions of public policies, micropolicies and micropolitics, and the self-conception of teachers. The analysis is based on a data sample of public policy documents, interviews with nine teachers, and discussion threads in a public Facebook group dedicated to teachers. We found that the main reasons teachers did not take child sick leave were their emotionally strongly sense of the imperatives attached to their self-conception as a teacher and supported by the micropolitics of schools, and their perception of child sick leave as representing uncertainty and failure rather than relief. Child sick leave has moreover been recognised as a public policy measure that is anchored in the modern separation of the public (work) and the private (family, care) spheres, which in the conditions of the pandemic crisis revealed its limitations.

Keywords: care, teachers, emotions, micropolicies, micropolitics, self-concept, pandemic, child sick leave

Received: November 3, 2021; Revised: September 30, 2022; Accepted: September 30, 2022; Prepublished online: October 31, 2022; Published: November 10, 2022  Show citation