Over the last few months, the sociological experiment generated by lockdowns has triggered a plethora of educational debates and research publications. However, the care work enacted by teachers has rarely been at the core of these analyses. As other scholars have previously highlighted, caring in teaching requires not only 'love' but also 'labour'. This means that it entails emotional, social, material and political costs, which are often unacknowledged or devalued. In this study, we delve into the experiences of a small group of caring teachers in Spain to explore the nature and effect of their care work during lockdown. Despite decades of feminist studies showing the value of care work, the stories of the teachers interviewed show the lack of recognition of caring in teaching. The article concludes with a call to problematise the idea of caring in teaching as a labour of love.