It should be a magical time. You sit on the edge of your sleepy child’s bed, tucking the soft duvet around their little shoulders and stroking their still baby-like hair. You’ve read them a chapter of their favourite story, perhaps heard a little something about their day. But as your lean down to kiss their forehead and wish them goodnight, you hear those doom-laden words.
“Daddy, I’m not feeling very well.”
You want to be sympathetic, to reassure the blessed child that you’ll be there to look after them, to attend their every need. You want them to know that your only concern is their well-being, and that you’ll be by their side until they are fully recovered.
And yet you can’t deny that your instinct is to think about the meeting you can’t miss in the office tomorrow, or the class you have to teach, or the hospital patients you must see. Your immediate thought has been whether your partner, or a neighbour, or a childminder might be available at short notice to care for a poorly child, too ill to go to school, while you head to work to avoid the wrath of your boss. Actually, your first thought may have been that they’ll just have to grin and bear it.
All of which explains why you kiss them quickly, assure them they’ll be fine in the morning and prepare yourself to take a firm line.
Any working parents will recognise the scenario. I experienced it as recently as this week, when my son told me at bedtime that he had “a bit of a sore throat”. The next morning, he was determinedly unwilling to get up, still apparently “not feeling great”. My wife had left for work already, and I had office engagements I could ill-afford to miss. I gritted my teeth, put my sympathy to one side, and – after giving him a light breakfast – marched him over the field to school.
When a child is properly ill of course, there is nothing you can do about it. Then again, a dose of Calpol can do wonders. And I bet we all know that parent who brings their kid to school the day after they’ve been violently vomming because, well, “they feel fine this morning”. That’s a line I wouldn’t cross, I hasten to add.
Either way, the simple truth is that children whose parents have to work away from home sometimes get a raw deal – especially in this season of coughs and sneezes. They might learn a degree of independence when they’re a latchkey kid, but they also have to get used to soldiering on through the same minor ailments that are keeping some of their peers in bed, cosseted by stay-at-home mums and dads.
I should know, as I was one such coddled child. For most of my childhood, my mother took a career break. If I had a sniffle or an ache, I knew she’d probably let me take a day off sick, feeding me Lucozade and chicken soup, and letting me watch crappy daytime TV. She didn’t have to worry about taking annual leave or rearranging a key work event; and I didn’t have to face class with a cold.
Yet here’s a funny thing. It wasn’t long before I began to feel guilt. My mum might agree to me staying at home, but we both knew when it was genuinely warranted – and when it wasn’t. I came to realise I was gaming the system and doing so for really no gain. Heinz soup and Going for Gold and being bored at home weren’t worth hamming up a sore throat for.
It was, I decided, better to push through the mild pain barrier, or put up with the inconvenience of a tickly cough at school, than to fester in bed. I have ended up taking the same approach to work: anything less than actual puking or a fever, and I’d rather crack on.
Perhaps that softness in my childhood somehow bred resilience. If it did, will my hardline approach to my own children ultimately have the opposite effect? When they get into employment and can decide for themselves whether they’re well enough to work, perhaps they’ll pull sickies left, right and centre.
As it happens, research indicates that Gen Z workers are significantly more likely to take time off for ill-health than older generations. They are also more likely to have had two working parents – or a working single parent – than their forebears. Perhaps taking time off work for a runny rose makes up for being forced into school with an earache years before. The prevalence of streaming services probably makes the prospect more appealing than it was when there were only four TV channels too.
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Then again, evidence also suggests that taking time off can reduce the length of an illness – not to mention reducing the chances of infecting others. I should probably think of that next time I have a grotty cold.
As for whether I should also apply that logic to the next occasion my son says he has a “sore throat”, I’m less sure. Past experience suggests he recovers from that type of ailment by lunchtime, usually followed by several hours of scrolling on YouTube or gaming on the Xbox. Now that’s an affliction I would certainly like to find a treatment for.
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