to ask managers how they view time off work for kids being ill?

[MaximumHoldMousse]

Hi I would really appreciate some insight please! My preschooler has got an awful bug, keeps vomiting after every drink, really nasty. I was working from home when I had to collect from nursery. I emailed in to explain situation, and that I thought she would sleep so I could continue with work but she stayed awake so I couldn't till late at night (managed to get work done in the end). Today my OH was of with her. She can't go to nursery tomorrow so will have to be off I think. I would just really appreciate anyone who has parents working for them, how do you feel about this? Does it happen a lot? Am really new (1 month) into my job and worried it looks bad.. But then I feel daft for worrying..

tl,dr: how annoyed would you be if your employee was off work because their child was ill?

Thanks! x

[PurpleDaisies]

Ok I wouldn't discriminate but certainly if someone were to take the piss taking time off I'd bring it to more senior management attention.

Talking to someone about frequent absences is fine. Deciding not tk hire someone based on their gender/parental status is not fine.

[drspouse]

Parents should be lining up suitable care before an emergency strikes

But most of your examples of "suitable care" won't be willing to care for a potentially infectious child, nor one in hospital, and many of them won't be available at less than 24h notice.

We have a fairly wide range of carers available and struggle if childcare breaks down. Our two DC regularly go to nursery and to a CM and we also have a part time babysitter and in theory my DM (2 1/2 hours away) and an ex-babysitter who still lives locally.

But the nursery won't take the DCs under most sickness conditions (and obviously if in hospital we have to be there), the CM is slightly more liberal as she'll take them if no longer infectious, but she isn't always available at short notice. If the CM herself is ill the nursery never ever has any spare places. The ex-babysitter now has a daytime job (she would still do an occasional evening job in extremis e.g. to enable us to switch over hospital duty while the other DC was in bed), the current babysitter has other daytime jobs on some days of the week and my DM is getting on a bit and can cope with one DC but because DC2 still needs a bit of lifting she isn't confident at that.

And neither of the babysitters or the GP would stay home with a child with D&V. Probably chicken pox since as far as I know they've all had it, and our CM would probably take one DC towards the end of CP as well as ditto.

So we have FIVE sources of childcare other than ourselves and yet, we have to stay at home ourselves with a child with D&V and obviously we have to be with a child in hospital. What more are we expected to do to line up alternative childcare? Our neighbours either all have children themselves (who they won't want to catch D&V) or work (why would they take time off for our children?) or both.

We both get some child-sickness days but would be more than happy to take AL if we needed to for this (which we have done towards the end of a hospital stay).

Children now in their toddling years are going to be the ones wiping your bum when you are in your nursing home, diagnosing your Alzheimers, and paying into the pension pots so you can take out of them, if you are of working age. The parents who are staying home - often at financial cost to themselves - are the ones who are bearing the cost now.

If fewer people have children, this will be spread even more thinly and it will be even harder to find bum-wipers and Alzheimers-diagnosers and pension-payers. Children don't just benefit the parents of those children.

[Buckinbronco]

The professions and sciences are over run with men at senior management despite the fact female graduates often outnumber them. It's a massive problem and anyone who denies it is a fool.

Notinagreat place i have to run out the door at 5. My childcare finishes at 6. There are 2 issues here;

1. Whether or not people need to regularly pick up my work. If they do, it tends to be a certain type of job (pretty junior and generic) and there are one of 2 problems here- my performance isn't good enough, or there is too much work. Both easily addressed by competent management NOT other employees
   

2) whether I have the style of work that can be picked up by others. I would suggest this is fairly rare actually, outside of generic roles. Personally I don't, I have my own responsibilities and if they are not met its my fault. If my workload is high, which it often is as I work on projects, I work from home in the evenings.

Both these problems should not prevent me running out at 5 or impact my performance.

[DrDreReturns]

Is there a a labor shortage somewhere, that I am unaware of?

In certain industries, including mine, there is an acute shortage of skilled employees.

[BarbarianMum]

It happens. A lot when children are small.

We don't agree to people working from home whilst looking after sick children (because in our experience the two aren't compatible) but making up the hours (if the job allows, most do), unpaid leave or taking holiday are all fine.

If it was happening to the extent that it was affecting the person's ability to perform their role that would lead to a competancy hearing but whenever someone's caring duties have ramped up (needing to nurse a dying parent fe) we have always worked out a solution long before that's become an issue.

[notinagreatplace]

Buckinbronco

If you're getting all of your work done and leaving at 5, that's fine. If you're picking stuff up at home in the evenings, that's fine too.

If you're asking others to pick things up for you so that you can stay at home for an ill child but you aren't willing to be flexible ever to reciprocate, that's not fine. That's what I'm saying.

As an aside, I think parents in more senior jobs that tend to involve a bit of give and take need to think about how to factor that into their childcare arrangements.

[LeaLeander]

Children now in their toddling years are going to be the ones wiping your bum when you are in your nursing home, diagnosing your Alzheimers, and paying into the pension pots so you can take out of them, if you are of working age. The parents who are staying home - often at financial cost to themselves - are the ones who are bearing the cost now.

If fewer people have children, this will be spread even more thinly and it will be even harder to find bum-wipers and Alzheimers-diagnosers and pension-payers. Children don't just benefit the parents of those children.

See, parents who pat themselves on the back saying they are doing the rest of us a favor and we should be grateful are delusional.

First, there is no looming shortage of human beings. In fact with dire climate change and economic shifts, those descendents of yours will be lining up to change my adult diaper for a few coins and a biscuit at the rate we are going.

Second, I will have paid in the US social security system for more than 50 years by the time I retire, as well as disproportionately high income taxes relative to parents, property taxes on two properties (here prop tax pays for schools) for more than 50 years without ever enrolling a student in either district (which is fine, I believe in free public education) donated tens of thousands to charities that benefit women & children and otherwise more than done my share as an upstanding citizen without producing any liability for the health, welfare, education or public assistance systems here. Without ever taking tax credits or otherwise offsetting what I paid in. That future workers will then be doing their rightful share of providing cash flow for SS payouts is as it should be; they won't be doing me and other elders a favor. They will be doing their bare minimum duty. Furthermore, we can always import plenty of qualified workers to pay into these systems, no need to subsidize homegrown ones unless one is a xenophobe or bigot.

Third, parents aren't exactly doing the greatest job, at least here in the US, if you look at the high school dropout rate (35%), the teen pregnancy rate, piss-poor academic 'achievement' relative to other countries, the fact that very few Americans speak a second language, the levels of criminality among teens and 20-somethings, the massive backlog and gigantic public expense of the family courts systems and many other metrics. Do we of the village get to hold them accountable for these epic fails? No, we are supposed to accommodate, accommodate, accommodate and pay, pay, pay with no input into who breeds, when and how often.

Fourth, the human population is burgeoning at the expense of many other species that some of us find equally deserving to humans if not more so , from bees to elephants. Producing a western child is an environmental disaster.

Well, the village is getting a bit tired of this state of affairs. The era of special privileges for those producing "the next generation" is waning.

Do what you want to do to make your life fulfilling but don't expect to be thanked for it.

[Buckinbronco]

What im saying is I don't think is common for others to be picking up the work of those who leave at 5 and if they have to, it's a consequence of ineffectual management.

[Buckinbronco]

Lea Leander you seem to really like the sound of your own voice but what you're saying is actually nonsense.

[LeaLeander]

Only those people with little to add to the discussion need to resort to personal remarks about other posters. Case in point ^

[notinagreatplace]

Buckinbronco

Ok - I still don't think you're quite getting my point.

What I was trying to say was:

When someone takes a day or more off to look after an ill child, generally speaking their colleagues will pick up at least their most urgent work. My job is very far from "generic" and yet many of our deadlines just won't wait for someone to get back.

If the person who is taking that day off is someone who is generally flexible and willing to help their colleagues out, their colleagues will generally mind this a lot less.

I.e. if you are inflexible yourself but demand flexibility from your colleagues to help you out, that doesn't make you a great employee.

It doesn't sound like any of this applies to you personally.

[Buckinbronco]

I don't think it does apply to Me, I am just wary of people who claim things like that. How do you go on holiday then? If companies are set up poorly ie when a team member is on holiday it is significant effort and causes resentment for another to cover their job it's a problem.

I get what you mean about not caring if it's a two way thing but that's just a nice to have- the manager can't control that. They need to be able to run the team effectively when there is absence without causing upset amongst remaining staff

[whois]

But most of your examples of "suitable care" won't be willing to care for a potentially infectious child, nor one in hospital, and many of them won't be available at less than 24h notice.

There are emergency childcare services, that do exactly this.

[LeaLeander]

People plan for holidays, to minimize the effects on their co-workers and on the business. That is a completely different situation than repeatedly ringing in to say one won't be in that day due to something going on at home.

Comparing planned, approved absences with unplanned, last-minute absences is apples to oranges.

[drspouse]

I will have paid in the US social security system for more than 50 years by the time I retire

You are delusional if you think that's going to pay for your retirement. The US SS system is in crisis. Not enough is being paid in and the people drawing it are living longer and longer. It needs people (legal workers who pay SS, which is awkward if you only want to pay poverty wages as home grown workers that work legally can usually get better wages than that) to pay into it. Those include parents who may occasionally take time off with sick children, and those children - both your contemporaries and their children. If you make it harder for mothers to work, you're shooting yourself in the foot.

Parents don't choose to have poor education, massively conservative sex education policies that lead to teen pregnancies, few qualified language teachers, punitive youth justice policies that prevent rehabilitation. They don't choose to have poor outcomes for their children. OK, maybe they do as part of the "taxpayer" cohort but you're in that cohort too so you chose them too.

[monkeymamma]

Lealeander, I have many sources of alternative child care including my lovely mum close by. Lots of friends and neighbours are nice too. Good nurseries for the boys. But when they are vomming and having explosive diarrhoea you can not expect anyone but you to want to look after them. And if they're really ill, in my opinion, leaving a crying, feverish 1, 2, or 3 year old with anyone but mum or dad is basically cruel. And this 'oh the world population is so high' thing is no argument really. The logical outcome of everyone choosing not to have children is population = 0.

[LeaLeander]

Well, not to derail the thread drspouse but actually i am not delusional. The SS crisis is a political meme created by charlatans to hoodwink the ill-informed. it's solvent for several decades to come and the fix is very simple: Raise the cap on salary subject to contributions. It can go on in perpetuity with that slight adjustment.

As to whether my contributions will cover what I reap - debatable but at least as a single chidlfree I have not already sapped it with claims by minors, minor survivors, disabled minors, a stay-home spouse, divorced spouses etc. People in my cohort put the lightest footprint on the SS system and we cannot name a beneficiary in case of premature death. It's all down the drain and redistributed to the childed.

Couple of examples: About 18 months ago a woman i know was widowed. Her husband was 60, she is 41. He earned about $80K a year and so does she. They had a 14-year-old daughter. Between the daughter's survivor benefits and the "caregviver" benefits the widow will collect, they will collect about $150K in tax-free cash by the time the girl is 19. Now, that girl will never "pay back what she receives" plus foot the bill for her mother's SS plus her own, t he way you all are constantly saying that the future generation is going to do. In addition eventually the widow will collect on her husband's SS account instead of her own because, while their recent salaries were similar, he had higher lifelong earnings and thus a higher benefit. And because he was married to his first wife for more t han 10 years, she too will be collecting off his account. I assure you that all of this adds up to FAR more than he ever contributed and FAR more than the liability a single childfree would incur at the same lifelong wage level as him. So frankly I feel no qualms about my footprint on the system compared to the childed. Not to mention the benefits the 8 million or so kids who are on SS disability. You think their own parents' contributions cover that??

Family next door to our cottage - father died of heart attack when kids were pre-teen and teen so all four of them collected SS survivor benefits for many years and the mom got caregiver benefits. No sooner was the younger daughter over 18 then she hooked up with a meth head and had two kids by him. He ran their car off the road, the little girl was killed and the baby boy brain damaged. So was the father. So he, the baby (who is now age 28) and the baby's mother (till the baby was 19) all have been a liability lo these many years. Now the granny of the clan is in her late 80s and has been collecting widow's benefits since age 60. One of the adult sons has been "on disability"f or some mystery aches and pains for many years too and he lives there too. There is no way this family is a net economic benefit to society; all they do is sit around, smoke weed and figure out how else to bilk the system. The "brain damaged" 28 year old is a Juggalo (racist band groupie) with a Confederate battle flag in his window; some benefit to society he is. His mother has shacked up with a long trail of losers, who seem to live off her and her benefits, and on and on. Their house is on a lake and they seem to have no problem affording new boats, etc. all on the largesse of the working taxpayer.

Don't tell me that all these wonderful members of "the next generation" are even pulling their own weight let alone anyone else's. I can't stand republicans in the US but Mitt Romney had a valid point about the 47 percent of takers. We the net payers are tired of getting up and going to work every day to support them.

[ExConstance]

I manage a team which includes 30 women, many with children. All this explosive DV and being rushed off to hospital doesn't happen very often, with a bit of goodwill we muddle through. I can't get over excited about this problem as it is far more prevelant for staff to need time of themselves for minor surgery etc. and we just have to factor this into overall staffing levels. The staff with children tend to do more weekend work, as they have partners at home then, so no overall disadvantage to anyone else.

As many others have said if I think the female partner is prioritising her male partner's work over her own I do get very grumpy.

[HarlotBronte]

Is there a a labor shortage somewhere, that I am unaware of?

Yes. There are a great number of them that you are unaware of. Because, although you clearly love posting about global overpopulation, you fail here to realise that it doesn't matter how many unemployed people there are if not enough of them have a particular skillset to fill all the jobs that need doing by people with that skillset. Perhaps you are very easily replaced, I don't know. The same is not true for everyone. Perhaps your employer recruits for the sort of role that is ten a penny, but they don't all. Some of them even have to take whatever the suitably qualified applicants want to offer, in terms of flexibility and the like. I presume posters were referring to the possibility that your boss might be recruiting for the sort of roles where excluding half of the job market would be, as well as impressively illegal, also cutting off her nose to spite her face.

Me, I prefer parents. They're much less likely to call in sick Mondays because they're so hungover they can't be fucked getting out of bed.

[parallax80]

My director, a mother of three herself (all born while she was in the latter stages of medical school and sometimes carried in backpack on patient rounds, so it's not like she doesn't understand)...

This doesn't strike me as either responsible parenting or responsible doctoring.

Patients deserve attention without distractions, and deserve not to be exposed to "minor" childhood infections that can be life-threatening to immunocompromised people. My kids deserve to be looked after while unwell, and not exposed to all manner of bugs, as well as the unfiltered raw emotions that are often present in hospitals.

(Tell your boss not to stress though Lea, I don't have time off with kids illnesses as DH and I are expert Shift Tetris players.)

[GnomeDePlume]

IME it totally depends on the way an employee behaves generally and also in the specific situation.

I have seen colleague having to be practically pushed out of the door to go and be at the bedside of a seriously ill child. For this person there has been a lot of good will and an awful lot of 'dont worry, we will cope without you!' type comments made to them. On the whole these are the people with low level sickness cover in place. When they have to drop everything (or have things wrested from their grasp) it is for an emergency.

On the other hand there are those colleagues who will send a text in saying that their child hasnt slept well/has a cold so they will be working from home that day. All kinds of wrong made worse when they cant be raised on the phone as they have fallen asleep on the sofa.

Unsurprisingly the first person is being earmarked for promotion the second is being passed round the business as nobody wants them.

All are men BTW.

Always, always phone, dont email, message or text unless this is an emergency where a phone call just isnt possible.

[MrsMook]

I've had 3 days off caring for sick children (2 DCs, oldest is 5). I've had one day off ill myself. My absence rate is better than any of my colleagues, regardless of their family situation. DH is able to work from home most days, but unable to reschedule site work at short notice, so he tends to be first to look after sick children, then I cover the gaps when he is unable to, or needs to return to the office. I'm able to do some work at home, but I have to set my cover work, and work needs cover for me. It's a nuisance to be off regardless of whoever is ill.

We have no external back up. DH is in a highly specialised role so living near family is not viable. Besides, our family either have their own full time work commitments or are too aged to deal with sick children. We have many local friends who are invaluable in other situations, but they all work full time too. One did cover for us when DC2 was due, but she'd got the benefit of some level of notice and was able to prepare to work from home around the time that the birth was most likely.

We're just fortunate that the DCs are quite hardy, and then try to share the burden to minimal impact on our work.

[lamiashiro]

As a non-parent, I'm a bit torn on this. Last year, I was in a situation at work where there was only two of us who did my job and we are on different continents. My colleague's DCs had a long run of sickness which meant she was taking days off at no notice which our manager was fine with, but it meant everything got left to me.

There were a couple of occasions when I was actually off sick myself or on leave and was called to log in and do a specific task because my colleague had sick kids and had taken the day off. After it happened for the third time, I asked for a meeting with our manager and said that we needed to train someone else as a backup. Fortunately, she agreed and it's no longer a problem, but I can see it's a difficult situation.

[Wineandcheases]

My husband Job is by far the main proportion of our money . I know they like to hear that husbands take equal time so I'm afraid I'm dishonest I say he has when he hasn't . He often isn't local and would take him 3-4 hours to get back - so I take the time off . And lie .
Do I feel guilty - not in this job they treat staff terribly .im there as I have school hours

[CallousAndStrange]

The attitude of some managers on here sickens me. That female managers would undo years of women fighting for equality in the workplace by actively discriminating against working mothers is disgusting. That it is so ingrained in some managers to be so self-centred about their business that they don't give a shit about their employees' general wellbeing (including right to a family life and all that entails) is, I think, a big part of why workplace stress is so common in this country.