Dual-Income Couples Scramble to Stay Afloat When a Child Is Sick : Family: When bosses are inflexible or deadlines are pressing, an illness can provoke frantic--and sometimes angry--negotiations.
Amid dirty breakfast dishes, the battle is joined: “What? A fever? Well, how bad is it? Can he go to school?” says one parent to the other. Both dive for the thermometer.
These days, it may be either parent whose shift can’t be swapped, lunch date switched or big deal delayed. Whether by choice or financial necessity, about 70% of families rely on two incomes.
That means carefully choreographed balancing acts, intricate household management and coordination--a heavy defensive line ultimately vulnerable to five simple words: “I don’t feel so good.”
“When everybody’s healthy, everything’s wonderful. But God forbid someone gets sick. It throws the whole schedule to hell,” said Melissa Wahl, who has two school-age sons. “I could afford to be more sympathetic when I was a full-time mom.”
Parents in the work force often end up trying gently to assess how mild, momentary or perhaps psychosomatic their child’s ailment might be. Then the guilt sets in: How do you rate this tiny person’s degree of misery?
“You don’t want to tell your kids they have to go to school even if they have a sore throat or stomachache,” said Wahl, an assistant editor at Executive Female Magazine in New York. “But you sometimes do it anyway and hope for the best because you don’t want to look undependable.”
Despite a growing sensitivity to parents who work outside the home, a certain bias still exists in many offices. The parent who stays home with a sick child may be cast as unreliable or uncommitted to the team.
Ideally, one or the other parent can take a day or two off. But many bosses frown on this, forcing workers into uncomfortable lies. For single parents especially, it may mean risking a job they need to survive.
The lucky families know that a nearby friend or relative is available to help out. Some communities, though they are the minority, offer emergency day-care alternatives through a hospital, community or private center.
But such resources are scarce. Most parents are more or less on their own when the day-care center turns away a feverish child or the baby-sitter refuses to come.
“The negotiations are very delicate. Egos are on the line,” said Barbara Reisman, executive director of the Child Care Action Campaign in New York. “Couples can make all kinds of arrangements, but survey after survey shows that emergencies are still real killers.”
Increasingly, teachers and school nurses say, parents are gambling that their child will feel better by lunchtime. Too often, the child doesn’t and someone gets a call at work. About nine times out of 10, that person is Mom.
“Throwing up is the ticket home. They don’t fool around on that one,” said Reisman, a mother of two. “The janitors come along with the sweeping compound and you come and get your child.”
Though her husband is willing to share in the responsibility and works in New Jersey, which is closer to their kids’ school than her office in New York City, Reisman said, “It’s still me who gets the initial call.”
Studies indicate that men and women more equally share the household load than in decades past, but it is still women--even those with full-time jobs--who handle about 80% of the laundry, shopping, child care and cooking.
Of 14 million employed married women with children under 15 years old, 3.7% reported that they alone missed work the previous month because child care arrangements broke down, according to a new census report. Among husbands, it was 0.7%.
At a baby shower recently near her home in Raleigh, N.C., Beverly Mills listened with interest as the guests--other mothers--complained that their husbands weren’t involved enough in child-rearing.
“When children get sick, the first words out of their mouths are still very often, ‘I want my mommy.’ And that induces a lot of guilt,” said Mills, author of the syndicated question-and-answer column “Child Life.”
The bonds formed during maternity leave are strong, and the weight of tradition not easily bucked. Earl Grollman, co-author of “The Working Parent Dilemma,” said many men still tend to view themselves as the traditional breadwinner--even when their wives make more money.
“The real problem for men is that they still feel nurturing isn’t within their province,” said Grollman, who lectures widely on parenting. “But those who have assumed more of a role tell me how much more meaningful their life is. They’re not only bringing children into the world, but also sharing in the joys and pain.”
For their part, child-care advocates say, employers and government policy-makers must do a better job of recognizing the growing role of women--parents--in the labor force.
President Bush last month vetoed the Family and Medical Leave Act for the second time in as many years. The failed bill would have guaranteed many American workers up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave a year to care for a new child or ill relative. Instead, Bush has proposed tax credits for companies that provide unpaid emergency leave.
“If we really care about ‘family values’ and two-parent families, we’ll do things to make it easier for them to survive,” said Faye Crosby, an expert on gender issues at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.
“What to do when a child gets sick is a terrible battle between couples,” added Crosby, author of “Juggling.” “It erodes the foundations of family and builds up walls of resentment. Ultimately, nobody wins.”
There are signs of progress. In an unprecedented collaborative effort, 11 of the nation’s leading companies recently committed $25.4 million to day care and other programs for employees’ children and elderly relatives.
The New York law firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore has been a groundbreaker with its on-site emergency care facility in Manhattan. On snow days or teacher workshop days, the odd school holiday or baby-sitter’s vacation, everyone from cafeteria staff to the partners is covered.
“We get calls 24 hours a day--and you can hear the parents’ relief,” said Tara Greaney, who directs the sunny 3-year-old center. “Every company should have a place like this, a place where people can feel good about leaving their children when arrangements break down.”
Unfortunately, contagious children are a different story. Few day-care centers are equipped to care for them, nor do many children want to be away from home when they’re feeling sick.
“The child is really caught in the middle. They need to be home resting. And they deserve to have a parent there,” said Gerri Sweder, co-author of “The Working Parent Dilemma.” “But we as a society haven’t said that. We’ve allowed people to struggle along separately.”
Not surprisingly, parents feel stretched and sometimes grow cranky. When harsh words slip out, children often are within earshot.
“They might say, ‘Oh my God, how can you be sick?’ ‘I have this meeting’ or ‘I have to be in the office by 7 a.m.,’ or ‘I’ve got to fly to Chicago,’ ” Sweder said. “It’s important to remember that children don’t want to be sick. All they want is comfort.”
