Sick days are where the rubber hits the road for equal parenting.
Kids get sick, and they get sick a lot in the early stages
Evidence guru Emily Oster says kids younger than school-age get an average of six to eight cold a year, which last an average of 14 days. (School-age kids have two to four colds per year.) The accepted wisdom is kids will get sick relentlessly in their first year of school, whether they start at 6 months or 6 years. A friend’s GP said a rule of thumb is 12 illnesses in the first 12 months.
In Buddy’s first six months of school (day care, 3 days/ week), he brought home:
- 5 ear infections
- Diarrhea
- Gastro
- Conjunctivitis
- Unexplained fever
- Common cold
- A rash that looked like Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease but were actually flea bites from sandpit (!)
Young children are disgusting disease vectors that trying to kill us.
The tricky thing about sick kids is that your care arrangement instantly disappears.
The threshold for sick days is lower than you think. At Buddy’s school, if he has green nose, a high temperature (often temporary, common during teething) or is otherwise sent home, he cannot return without a medical certificate. In these pandemic times, schools and child care services are particularly sensitive about the coughs and clear runny noses, which are symptoms of Covid but also just how little bodies respond to cold weather.
In addition to the genuinely sick days, there are plenty of days when kids are functionally fine but won’t meet the threshold for school. Even if you have a role and organisational flexibility that allows working from home, your ability to sneak some emails is proportional to the age of the kid. The seven Police Academy movies* might distract your 12 year old, but not your toddler; even the most dedicated Heeler fan won’t sit through the 68 Bluey episodes required to cover an 8 hour work day. (*That’s what 12 year olds watch, right?!)
Last minute temporary care arrangements are rare and expensive, family favours fraught (if you’re lucky enough to have grandparents on-tap, dare you risk them getting gastro?)
This means a lot of unscheduled days off work.
Who takes the hit?
Australian data is sparse, but a quick google and 15 years in the workforce tells me this usually falls to women. A 2014 American study of parents who work outside the home found 39% of women reporting taking time off work to care for a sick child. For their male counterparts, it’s only 3%. As is standard for these surveys, men and women have different perceptions of how much of the burden is shared – in this case 42% of men say it’s a joint responsibility, but only 33% of women agree. My guess? It’s easy to remember that one time you took the hit; doesn’t mean you’re doing it on the regular. And I’m not going to go into the well-documented phenomenon of women taking the hit during Covid (The Primal Scream series on NYT has got you covered).
If the mother has always been the primary carer, of course this will be the default – another case for the Switcheroo.
What is the equal partnership alternative?
We’ve been riffing on this for the past year. Our core principle is: every sick day has to start with a conversation.
- How long do we think he’ll be off?
- How can we minimise this? (yes we have optimised the heck out of this – our top tips here)
- How are we going to divide it up?
- What are you critical meetings/ deliverables?
- Can one of us take the hit?
- Who took the hit last time?
Sometimes one of us puts our hand up. Most of the time we land on shift work.
(One missing element here is: who has the ‘bigger job’ – is one person in a new role, travelling for work, reaching for a promotion or working on something high profile? Well that complicates things. More to say on that another time.)
One model: splitting the hit
My preferred approach is dividing the day in half. Age 2, Buddy reliably sleeps from 1-3pm (though if he’s genuinely sick, this can change). We can split the day down the middle: I’ll work 8am-3pm (7 hours); Tee will work 7-8am and 1-7pm (7 hours), with the option to catch up when Buddy goes to bed at 7. This also lets us go into the office or work from a cafe, without the distraction without the wails of an ear infection.
Depending on what we’re working on, it can be more efficient to break it into smaller chunks. “I’ll do 2 hours of focussed work, then take a one hour break so you can lead that meeting.”
This works for now. We both have a lot of control over our workdays. We both have supportive bosses who trust us to get the job done and colleagues who know we put in the hours. We don’t fear what The Grace Papers (parenting x workplace culture experts) calls the ‘flex grudge’ of colleague resentment about flexible working arrangements. They are long, tiring days – we’re trying to fit in even more than we usually do. It leaves us feeling depleted – especially if Buddy has shared whatever medieval disease he’s brought home from school.
Taking a half day of leave
A far easier version of the above is one (or both) of us taking a half day. The pros are significant:
- Do enough work to keep projects moving and inbox in control
- Feel less stressed – not trying to combine a full day of work with a half day of child care
- More sustainable for multiday illnesses
- My small sick/carers leave balance goes much further
- If I took a whole day of leave, I’d probably be on emails that night and work longer the next day to catch up – this way I’m getting paid for it.
Over the last year I’ve taken a lot of half days carrying for a sick Buddy, and no-one’s batted an eyelid. It hasn’t slowed me down, and I don’t feel penalised for caregiving.
So that’s what we’re doing. At least until Commandant Lassard can take over.
A word of caution
At work I try to be ‘loud and proud’ when I have to take a step back to do care work. I’ll update my Outlook autoresponder and my Slack status to say “juggling a sick kid but taking calls” and occasionally take a meeting with Buddy on my knee. It was only recently that I realised these attempts to normalise caregiving and “bring my whole self to work” might backfire and undermine others. Possible assumptions: “she thinks we should keep working when our kids are sick” or “in this organisation, we are expected to keep working through caring responsibilities”. This hit my like a brick when when a new parent joined my team – thankfully she actually asked me what my expectations were for those unavoidable care days. Now I’m trying to be more explicit: everyone is entitled to take time off to care for their family and should feel supported to do so. Working flexible hours and half days work for me and my family arrangements. Do what’s right for you. I don’t think I’ve got the balance right on that yet.