Web Letters: Sick Children, Working Moms

Even if Dad, rather than Mom, takes off to care for a sick child, are men penalized as much as women are?

Increasingly, it's elderly as well as kids who have such emergencies. Do their younger family caregivers get penalized for taking care of parents?

Many women and men have gone on welfare in the past because of caregiving issues. Welfare "reform," which pushed these folks into jobs, does nothing to address this very real problem.

The new rules give a five-year lifetime limit for taking TANF, as it's now called. Guess what--the elderly don't die, nor do chronically ill kids magically get well in that time period. Caregivers are unaffordable at their pay level. For these families, welfare is often the more responsible, perhaps the only option.

Any wonder why, among other things, foster care placements have increased since welfare reform?

Fran Froelich

Upper Darby, PA

Isn't it time that women (like the woman who wrote this article) acknowledged that men have a stake in this also? Survey: Working dads want more family time

Paul Thompson

Kansas City, MO

Here is a case in which it is hard to see how more family medical leave would have helped with the basic situation:

I worked the sales floor in a department with highly technical merchandise. Our staff of seven was highly skilled and knew the merchandise well, but untrained outsiders from other departments were semi-useless.

One lady had a sick child whose care required either a trained specialized nurse or herself to stay during an attack. As the problem would come without warning, often after she woke her kid for school (2nd Grade), even were she to call for a nurse (expensive) she would be delayed up to two hours in getting to her job. She would normally wake the child about 45 minutes before she was due to leave, dropping him off on the way. It was simpler to just call in most of the time. Also, who would be able to watch the kid for the rest of the day?

Meanwhile I then had two sick elderly parents to cover, but was fortunate to have a regular schedule I could keep in sharing the burden. I didn't work Saturdays, but came in every Sunday. The company tried to be as flexible as it could with both of us.

The other trained sales people did not mind covering for her absences, but we were not always available when called on short notice. Even if available as called immediately when she would call in, it took time to get ready, take the bus or subway and report in.

Secondly, overtime for others is more expensive than having the scheduled person on duty. Some of us had other jobs or committments that reduced our flexibility in trading time slots with her, too.

Eventually she was fired. The rest of us had quite a debate on what should have been done in the circumstances, but most possible answers were impractical due to the expenses of the highly-skilled medicine needed on short notice.

We found that we could not blame the company, which was getting hurt by uncovered sales floor time and overtime pay, nor could we blame the sick child's mother. Non-coverage on the sales floor was a real and costly problem and cannot be ignored or glossed over.

I suspect many stories like this exist. Day care centers usually put prohibitive extra charges on late pickups because their staff, too, has other necessities. Day care, which was medically not an option for my friend, usually has no real scheduling flexibility.

It is equally true of many things like covering school snow days, when the kids are home.

I have no good answer, except to note that many jobs require the coordinated timing of many workers' input that is difficult to coordinate, so their jobs have little time flexibility.

It was a tragedy with no villains! Yet how would more leave have solved the basic problem?

John D. Froelich

Upper Darby, PA

As usual, never a mention of fathers...sad.

Jason Kennedy

New York, NY