About 10:30 yesterday, I got a call from Ian’s school. He had a runny nose, but no fever and was alert and functional. Still, his teacher didn’t want any kids oozing bodily fluids in her room, so he was booted out. Not a big deal now. It will be a big deal when I go back to work.
Paid sick leave is on the table at Congress. Ted Kennedy has a bill in the Senate which would mandate that employers with more than 15 employees offer 7 days of paid leave if they or a family member is sick.
The Institute for Women’s Policy Research found that 77 percent of workers in the lowest quarter by wages did not have paid sick days, while 43 percent of middle-class workers did not and 31 percent of workers in the top quarter did not.
Keep an eye on this one.
Elizabeth posts about a potential threat to FMLA.
Apt. 11d 
That’s a pretty harsh sick policy for kids–isn’t it more usual forbid kids with fever, vomiting, and brightly colored mucus?
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What Amy said. That sounds unusually harsh. Lyra has only been sent home for fevers (and a rash one time that turned to be an allergic reaction to an antibiotic–who knew it could appear on the 8th day?).
That said, I always felt bad for the kids who went to school no matter how sick they felt (as long as there was no fever or vomiting), because there was no parent at home to care for them. Now I also feel bad for the parents who have to chose between the best short-term interests of their child (staying home and resting) and their long-term interests (the family having enough money to pay their bills).
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T is home with the boys, so it’s not too big of a deal for him to keep them home. But we’ve still be struggling lately trying to decide how sick is too sick to be at school, because D’s been coughing for a good month now. I think we’ve kept him home 5 days, and took him home early once. At least some of the coughing is from his asthma, and is probably not infectious. It’s hard to know what’s the right thing to do.
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Yes, his school’s sick policy is a little harsh. Actually, it’s just his quirky teacher’s policy. It’s not really a big deal, since I’m home right now and his school is only part time anyway. In the spring, my mom is going to have to help out. I’m not going to be able to get out of teaching and Steve can never take off time, so my poor mom is going to have to pick up the slack.
And yes, it’s hard on sick kids when both parent work and there’s no grandparent to step in. Kids get sick so often and there’s also just a lot of these border line days, like D’s asthema days. That’s why this legislation is really important. I’m not sure if government or businesses should be picking up the tab, but I’ll be interested to see how this one pans out.
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Did we get sick that often? My memory of school is of everyone there and lots of perfect-attendance certificates (not for me, because I played hooky a lot, even in first grade).
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See, I kind of get why businesses hate intermittent sick leave. It’s really really hard to staff for. Laura — in your example, you’re coming up, now, with backup childcare plans for how to deal with a sick Ian when you’re teaching, and you’re fortunate that you have a ready-made plan. I rely on that as well (I too have access to wonderful grandparents). But, I just don’t see how your employer would be able to deal with you being intermittently unavailable for teaching.
Maybe there are a bunch of jobs where creative managers could figure out a way to deal, if they were just required to. But, I can’t help but feel that there are a number (and teaching college courses is a good example) where the solution simply has to be backup childcare, for expected illnesses (like a kid getting sick) rather than a workplace accommodation.
If felt the same way about the NYT article that talked about the plight of working class workers (nurse assistants, health aides, bus drivers) who lost their jobs because they had to miss a day, or because they were five minutes late in order to care for a sick relative or child. I feel bad for those folks, but I think people have to make suggestions of how you deal with those situations as the employer, not just moan
about the plight of the employee.
bj
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I was looking at the attendance statistics for my daughter’s elementary school a few days ago. Pre-K has the worst attendance, 92%. I believe kindergarten is slightly better. The older elementary classes had attendance levels of around 97%, if I remember correctly. So there is a substantial difference between the grades, although it’s unclear why. It might just be that parents have less compunction keeping small kids home, or taking trips with them that cut into schooldays.
I lean towards thinking that younger children do get sick a lot more. Last year as a three-year-old preschooler, my daughter seemed to be sick 1 or 2 days out of 5, including a memorable emergency room visit due to the dread rotavirus, and we ultimately took her out of preschool. This year, she’s been in school over three months, and she’s missed only about three days total due to illness. And when she’s sick, it’s extremely mild. I believe the folk wisdom on this is that it’s the first year in a group setting that is the worst virus-wise.
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How do you enable people to take care of sick kids without being an undo burden on employers? I’m not sure. If I don’t come in teach my class, it doesn’t get taught. There’s nobody who can step in to cover for me, especially if it’s a last minute crisis. If it’s a once a week class, this is a huge disaster. Perhaps the solution is special child care facilities at hospitals to care for the sick kids. They have such things now, but they are extremely expensive. Still that’s not a perfect solution, especially for the sick kid, who just wants to be at home with their parents when they feel horrible.
Kids get sick. Maybe less so as they get older, but it still happens. It’s probably even more common in poorer families with less adequate health care and poorer diets. These families are also the ones most likely to have the worst job protection.
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Let’s not to set up any incentives that make employers shun women and treat them as second-class employees, as seems to be the case in whichever Scandinavian country we were reading about recently, where women work predominantly in government.
In view of the fact that 40% of children are now born outside of marriage, it is not realistic to reply that dad is equally capable of staying home when junior has the flu. Dad is in a lot of cases not around. So unavoidably in these cases, sick kids are a mom problem that make her a less appealing employee even while she needs the money more.
I would argue (as would the folks at marriagescholars.org) that 40% is an absolute disaster. It’s no good talking about getting men to do their 50% if they are not present and available to do even 1%.
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At the risk of arguing against myself (I’ve made Amy’s argument in the past), the Scandinavian example does show that the workforce is very gender-segregated there. But, it doesn’t show that women are unhappy with this segregation. The generous benefits allowed child-bearers in Scandinavia does create disincentives for private hiring, but women, on average, don’t seem to be unhappy with the positions they’ve been relegated to.
Both our policies and the Scandinavians’ have unintended consequences (ours drives women out of the workforce, when they are overwhelmed with trying to meet both work & faimly responsibilities).
bj
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One reason for higher absenteeism in lower grades may simply be that the younger kids haven’t built up their immune systems as much as the older ones. I’ve heard anecdotally that kids in daycare are constantly sick the first year or so, but that after that first year their illness rate plateaus because their immune systems have toughened up; by contrast (the argument goes), kids who’ve been at home until Pre-K or kindergarten do all that initial getting-sick in those years.
In either case, it would explain why, by grade 4 or 5, they aren’t sick as much. It doesn’t give any further insight on how to deal with the sick kid problem when both parents work — particularly if said kids are younger and therefore can’t entertain themselves while a parent teaches a class down the hall. Or if said kids are ANY age and the parents’ workplace can’t tolerate their presence.
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Sorry! I meant familyscholars.org. Their focus is marriage and family.
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I definitely buy the first year in a group setting as being the roughest, germ-wise.
However, there does seem to be a difference between how children of different ages deal with the same bug. The rotavirus that led to several hours on an IV in ER for my four-year-old meant an overnight stay on an IV for my 10-month old. Meanwhile, I remember seeing a list-serve post from a mother whose younger infant had spent three days at the hospital on fluids for rotavirus. And if I’m not mistaken, frequency of ear infections is quite dependent on age. I believe I remember hearing that there’s something about the anatomy of young children’s ears that makes them particularly vulnerable.
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Furthermore, maturity makes a big difference in children’s hygiene. When I worked coop with a bunch of 3-year-olds, we would take 15 or so of them to the bathroom, they’d take turns going potty, they’d take turns washing their hands, and while they waited for their comrades to finish, they’d be touching every unhygienic surface they could reach. Hello GI distress!
I haven’t done potty duty with a group of four-year-olds, but its quite obvious that my own four-year-old is far more capable this year of keeping her hands off things she’s told are “yucky.”
I suppose the answer is to apply Purell to their paws every 15 minutes.
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