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.