Leadership in public baby rooms: challenges from relational emotional labor in Chile

This article examines leadership in baby rooms within a context of expanded coverage, targeted provision for disadvantaged families, and a fragmented Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) system. The frameworks of emotional labor and feminist ethics of care are brought together to explore the challenges faced by directors in educational settings serving babies under the age of two. Drawing on a qualitative approach and a multiple-case design that included eight baby rooms in the public provision network across different macro-regions of the country, the study conducted 20 individual interviews with directors and educational team members and eight focus groups with 28 family participants. The findings identify four leadership challenges: conveying the educational purpose of the level, building relational trust with families, coordinating administrative, pedagogical, and emotional work, and adjusting practices based on the responses of babies, families, and educational teams. The study shows that leadership in baby rooms operates as relational emotional labor, understood as a collective practice that makes care pedagogically meaningful, emotionally sustainable, and organizationally supported. It argues for policies and professional development initiatives that recognize emotional and relational labor as part of leadership practice, particularly within baby rooms.