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Maternal caring in Early Childhood Education (ECE) is a concept that has been heavily debated, praised, and also critiqued. From the feminist point of view, maternal caring equals to unpaid labor done mostly by women as teachers in the centers and mothers at home. The growing post-structuralist influence in many western universities has enabled more diverse opinions pointing at the complex tensions between caring practices and women-s roles as carers. What about Indonesia? This paper aims at juxtaposing the theoretical relevance of maternal caring in Indonesia-s ECE. It consists of two methodological parts: the first part will provide a background for this study. It reviews some historical milestones of women-s participation in ECE and how the notion of “care” is constructed across times. The second part will use an ethnographic case study with ECE teachers from Eastern Indonesia. In the second part, I present how concepts of caring brought by the ECE expansion position women critically at the center; yet, their struggles are ambivalent and remain invisible. I argue that maternal caring is a discursive practice, producing meanings that are varied, fragmented, incoherent, competing but also hybridized and unequal.