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It's almost here: flu season, swine or otherwise. As always, the media is seizing on the opportunity to scream PANDEMIC WE WILL ALL DIE, but the truth beneath the hype is this: 'Tis the season for a virus.
Nobody likes taking care of a sick kid. It's stressful. It's hard. It often makes you sick, too. And if you're a working parent, you get to add the stress of your employer and your childcare provider breathing down your neck to the hell cocktail of feverish children, doctor's appointments, pharmacies and healthcare coverage.
The CDC says:
If you are sick, you may be ill for a week or longer. You should stay home and keep away from others as much as possible, including avoiding travel and not going to work or school, for at least 24 hours after your fever is gone except to get medical care or for other necessities.
Hmm. A week or longer. Not going to work or school. RIIIIIGGHHHT.
I remember my daughter's first year of daycare. She contracted four childhood diseases along with the normal colds and viruses. She spiked a temperature of 105 degrees one night, which nearly gave me a heart attack. Many times I had to call the emergency nanny and pay more than I would earn that day to ensure someone could stay with her after I ran out of sick days. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was leave my sick baby with someone I didn't even know. But it was that or lose the job that helped put formula in her bottle and diapers on her rear and a roof over her head.
Even more fun? Getting to work and knowing people were probably wondering exactly how much time I was planning to miss that year and still get paid the same as them. And I understood their point of view. It looked like I was abusing the system, crying "sick kid" and "doctor's appointments" almost every week -- because I was.
My kid was sick all the time her first year in daycare.
I spent most of that year a defensive, angry wreck, and my daughter's health played a big part of that. Every time she was sick, I liked my job less. I liked daycare less. I liked myself less as her mother who couldn't keep all the balls in the air. I felt like a failure at my job and as a mother, and the constant discussions over who was going to take off work or find alternate arrangements to get to the doctor's office wasn't exactly helping my marriage, either.
I identified with this part of Heather's post at Pittsburgh Mom:
My husband is traveling more so he often isn't in town to take off if the kids are sick. it's up to me much of the time. And we have no family in town that could take our kids in an emergency. Our stay-at-home mom friends don't want to watch my sick kids (obviously) for fear of their children catching something. Understandable.
Suffice it to say I'm not enjoying the reports about upcoming swine flu situation. The regular flu is enough to make my delicately balanced work/school/childcare situation fall apart like the house of cards it is.
The worst part? I am one of the lucky ones. I have the ability to work from home, sick days AND health insurance. What about parents who don't even have paid time off?
Katie Bethell writes at MomsRising:
If the Secretary Duncan wants to offer real help and support to parents, he should publicly support the Healthy Families Act. This Act will allow working people to earn paid sick days that they can use to care for themselves or their children when they are sick. Paid Sick Days not only benefit families, they also save businesses money by keeping workers healthy and productive.
(More on MomsRising's petition for paid sick time here.)
Beverly Goldberg writes at Taking Note:
But the question is what alternatives are available, especially to a single parent who works at a low-paid job, especially the kind of job that does not offer sick days? (And even if a job offers a limited number of sick days, most parents use them to take care of their child and then, having contracted the illness from the child, they feel compelled to make it in to work while sick themselves.) What if the costs of hiring someone to look after the child cannot be met? What if there are
