The Need for Balance: The Impact of Sick Days on Working Parents and Children
Exploring the Importance of Employer Sick Leave Policies in Supporting Working Families and Quality Childcare
A note about this weeks newsletter; it focuses mainly on children and families but it does apply to all within the US in regards to how employers sick leave policies lack and cause harm to employees. So while you may not relate to all, I find it incredibly helpful to be aware of how they do not benefit anyone but the employer.
I woke up this morning with a tickle in my throat. I knew this may happen since my oldest began showing symptoms of a cold on Saturday and my youngest had such a runny nose on Monday you swore it was a faucet. My body feels rested, mind is still calm but my throat itches despite how many spoonfuls of honey I swallow.
Every time someone gets sick in this house I immediately think “at least we can keep them home” meaning that they won’t get anyone else sick outside of our house. I would prefer to keep it that way since understanding more and more how simple viruses are not so simple to those who are immunocompromised.
The Moral and Political Failings Millennials Are Up Against
Last week my husband and I sat on our sectional couch talking about how things in society make us understand why so many of our friends choose to forgo having children. Honestly, my battles with postpartum depression, psychosis, and preeclampsia would be enough to cause someone to pause and really reconsider and for that I co…
But what happens for families who don’t have that time? Last week I touched on an array of things that society has set up that links to moral, societal and public policy failing for children and families, but lets dive into it more.
Many families pay for childcare in some form whether it be paying someone for an in-home daycare, daycare center, preschool, or a nanny. Many places like preschool and daycares have you pay for the entire month or year, not for how many days you actually use their services per month. Another thing is a lot of these places aren’t on a sliding scale based on your income (unlike in Nordic countries) so many families are paying over $1,000 per month per child. While some employers will reimburse you for childcare, you have to first pay for it out of pocket which may be tight and near impossible for some families to swing.
So, when you’re already spending so much on childcare, keeping kids home to recover from an illness when they are vomit and fever free seems silly, right? But this is a matter of public health where a lot of us have been failed because of the increase in capitalism. What I mean by that is many families do not have the privilege or luxury to keep their kids home because they either won’t get paid for the sick day, or they’ll have to use a vacation day to cover it, and what is even more bewildering is many employers require a doctors note for staying home with your child if it’s been more than a day. Even if the child is well enough to not need to be seen by a doctor, and you’re doing your due diligence of keeping them home to decrease the spread of illnesses, you will still ultimately need to go see the doctor just for a note excusing your absence. That right there is such a bewildering thing to me because depending on what health insurance plan you have you’re spending $20-300 just to visit the doctor to have your absences be excused as most doctors do not write a doctors note without seeing their patient first.
So it’s a no-win situation where you either lose wages for the day, if you don’t have a doctors note to excuse your absence(s) you end up spending money to go to the doctor to get a doctors note, and you’ve already paid for childcare for that day as well as it is prepaid and you don’t get refunded for days you didn’t use. How is this ok?
These systems are broken and only benefit employers. How do they benefit employers?
How do employers benefit from this?
Use absences to dictate pay raise
Use absences against employees in performance reviews
Use absences to potentially fire an employee even if it’s been excused and follows the employee handbook (most employers have a rolling calendar for how many days in a year you can call in)
May open employee up for discrimination from management or more based on absences
If you or a family member requires FMLA (for yourself or to care for family) and accommodations, sometimes applying for it opens yourself up to more employer discrimination and a breech of medical privacy
These challenges make it hard for any family to take proper time off when their children are sick and put those in the community at risk of getting sick as well. There’s so much that can be improved in regards to this and if you’re interested in how we, in the US, stack up against other countries read this, this, and this. If you’re interested in books about childcare, education and public policies in relation to families I recommend Achtung Baby by Sara Zaske, Nordic Theory of Everything by Anu Partanen, There’s No Such Thing As Bad Weather by Linda Åkeson McGurk.
Disclaimer: Links for books are directly linked to my local indie bookstores page on Book Shop. I do not receive a commission if any of these books are purchased but BookShop redirects some profits to my local indie bookshop if anything is purchased. Thank you!