This article examines maternalism in the Czech Republic by exploring how waged and unwaged forms of caring work were framed through discourses of women's innately caring nature in the late twentieth century. Present-day hospital volunteering programmes, which bring female, lay volunteers onto hospital wards to provide unwaged care to patients, are inscribed by maternalist tropes historically associated with domestic work and family care, rather than the neutral expertise associated with female waged care workers in public, institutional settings. The article assesses the contemporary reinvention of maternalist discourses and their capacity to mobilise unwaged caring labour.