By Janice Robinson-Celeste

It is flu season, and parents know the sound. One cough, then two coughs, and suddenly you are standing in the kitchen with a raised voice asking, “Who’s coughing?” Because more than two coughs often means more than a cold. It can mean missed work, lost pay, or worse, a job that disappears while you are home caring for your child.

According to the C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health, one-third of parents of young children worry about losing pay or even their jobs if they stay home with a sick child. And when you have more than one child, one virus can mean multiple days, sometimes weeks, away from work. A 2025 survey found that 81 percent of U.S. workers are worried about losing their jobs.  Let’s face it, job security is a thing of the past

As a former daycare owner and director, I lived on the other side of that tension. There were days I wanted to say, please keep your child’s cooties home. But I knew that was not reality for many parents. The green or yellow mucus running down a child’s face was the infectious bat signal. Fever and head lice meant immediate pickup. Many programs require a doctor’s note before a child can return. Mott’s poll shows nearly two-thirds of parents with children in childcare say their child missed school due to illness in the past year.

The problem with sending a sick child to school is not just that one child feels miserable. It is the cycle. One child infects another. The virus circles the classroom, mutates, and comes back around. Or it hits the entire center at once. A report from Lurie Children’s Hospital found that 42 percent of parents admit sending children to school or daycare with mild cold symptoms, and 41 percent say they have done so even when they likely should not have. Even more concerning, 63 percent of parents say they have sent their child to school with a fever.

When generous paid leave is available, parents can keep children home without fear and break that cycle. Yet 40 million private-sector workers still lack paid sick leave. That gap is not just a labor issue, but a public health issue.

A major study published in JAMA Pediatrics in 2024 found that after New York implemented paid leave, hospitalizations and emergency visits for respiratory infections in infants dropped by 18 percent. RSV-related hospital encounters fell by 27 to 30 percent. These improvements were not observed among older children who were not eligible for the New York paid leave policy, leading researchers to conclude that the reduction was directly tied to paid leave. When parents could stay home during peak illness, transmission decreased.

It is time to retire the “tough it out” workplace culture. Pressuring employees to show up while their child is sick does not create productivity. It creates what economists call presenteeism. That is when employees are physically present but mentally distracted, exhausted, and potentially spreading illness.

People often think that when employees give staff the time off they need, it increases the prices of products and services, but that is just a myth. Harvard Business Review has reported that presenteeism costs the U.S. economy an estimated $150 billion each year. That is more than the cost of absenteeism. Consumers absorb that inefficiency through lower quality services and delayed output. Meanwhile, research shows businesses in states with paid leave see about a five percent increase in productivity.

One employee staying home for two days is manageable. An entire department catching the flu because someone felt pressured to show up is not. Paid sick leave is not a luxury. It is not a perk. When parents have the financial security to care for sick children, communities become healthier, workplaces become more productive, and the endless cycle of infection slows. We cannot keep pretending this is a parenting problem when it is a policy choice.

Janice Robinson-Celeste is a former educator and the founder of Successful Black Parenting Magazine,a multi-award-winning publication that empowers Black families. She is a Public Voices fellow of the OpEd Project in partnership with the National Black Child Development Institute.