The Gender Gap of Sick Time
Working mothers are ten times more likely than working fathers to take time off to care for sick children. What needs to change?
What’s the most difficult part of being a working mother?
That question was a recent topic of discussion in a moms group I belong to. The group includes moms who work full-time, part-time, in the gig economy, in self-employed positions, and/or who are planning to re-enter the workforce following time off with their young children.
One of the most commonly repeated responses was: being responsible for child care on 100% of the days their children were sick.
Of all the challenges working moms face, why was this such a common refrain?
It’s an underlying and often-unspoken truth: Moms are either viewed as more capable than their partners at caring for sick kids, or their work is viewed as less valuable. Or both.
Despite both parents working full-time in nearly half of two-parent households, nearly 40% of working mothers take time off work to care for sick children, compared to only 3% of working fathers. Mothers also are more likely than fathers to select the child’s doctor, take children for doctor’s appointments, and assure that children receive doctor recommended care.
At the end of the day, in our society’s heterosexual, dual-parent partnerships, the mother remains the default caregiver when a child is too sick to attend school or daycare.
This is a problem even for working parents who are fortunate enough to both have paid sick leave. Astoundingly, more than 34 million workers in the private sector do not have that benefit.
Of women who must miss work to care for sick children, 60% are forced to forfeit pay for their time. It’s clear that the imbalance in time spent on child care and work between mothers and fathers is not dramatically changing at the family level.
Do our workplace cultures perpetuate the imbalance of caregiving?
Constraints — often bound by societal and gendered expectations — have prevented working parents from achieving truly equal burdens of raising their children and pursuing individual careers. These dynamics continue to be shaped by a culture that pressures men to put their work first, and let family matters fall to moms.
The pressure for men to work even when their children are sick is a continuation of the expectations placed on them from day one of their children’s lives. A recent Pew Research study found that nearly one in two fathers say they face pressure to return to work quickly following the birth or adoption of their child, compared to 18% of mothers. This pressure is felt at the micro level, within organizational cultures, and at the macro level, where messages reinforce this imbalance as a part of the traditional masculine makeup.
Major Leaguer Daniel Murphy was castigated in the sports media when he exercised his right to three games of paternity leave after the birth of his child in 2014.
Popular sports radio hosts Craig Carton and Boomer Esiason went so far as to say on air that Murphy’s wife should have had a scheduled C-section to better coincide with Murphy’s season. While Esiason later apologized, the perception that fathers’ work is more important than mothers’ is reinforced at all levels of our culture.
What needs to change?
While our overall societal attitudes and public policies are expanding to place a greater focus on developments like paternity leave, caring for sick children remains aspect of workplace culture that remains largely veiled and stuck in decades-old conceptions of division of labor.
Employers must make it not just acceptable per their policies, but actively encouraged by their cultures for fathers to take sick time off to care for their kids and partners.
Family-friendly workplace cultures are good for business, giving a boost to employee retention and productivity. But beyond maternity/paternity leave, on-site child care, and dependent-care flex plans, a good workplace culture must value a parent’s responsibility to their family. Regardless of whether they are a child’s mother or father.
