With a new school year comes renewed fears of germs swirling around classrooms and being passed from kid to kid, spreading viruses like wildfire. While we assume parents wouldn’t knowingly send an ailing child to school, seven in 10 are doing exactly that, according to a recent poll of 2,000 moms and dads with children ages 3 to 16, conducted by OnePoll for the British health and hygiene company Essity.
Consciously sending a sick child to school and putting other kids at risk of falling ill might, at least on the surface, sound like a negligent move by parents. However, the poll went deeper to uncover the reasons behind this eyebrow-raising move. Not only are their rationales understandable, but they make it clear that school hygiene would benefit from parents receiving more support in the workplace.
What the poll found
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More than a third of parents believe a bug has spread around school as a result of their kid showing up sick.
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22% of surveyed parents revealed they’ve sent their child to school with an ear infection.
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19% said they’ve sent their child to school with a viral infection.
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17% said their kids came to school with diarrhea or vomiting.
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14% said they sent their kid in with the chicken pox before the spots fully scabbed over and stopped being contagious.
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Almost one in four admitted they told their children to lie about their health to stay in school.
Why parents say they’re sending kids to school sick
The poll aimed to go more in-depth by asking parents why they’ve made these questionable moves. Here’s what they said:
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Work stress: Almost one in three parents said they couldn’t afford to miss any more time off work.
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Peer pressure: More than one in five worried about what their co-workers would think of them if they stayed home to care for their children.
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Academic pressure: More than a quarter of parents say their child didn’t want to miss something important, like a test or field trip.
Why parents go to work sick, too
The poll also looked at the reasons parents put their own health on the back burner and go to work sick, given the pressures they face at work. Four in 10 worry they “aren’t sick enough” to take time off, 29% say their workload is too big to take off work just because they’re sick and 19% believe they already take too much time off for other matters.
How experts say parents should handle their sick kids
Given the bevy of reasons parents might struggle to keep a sick child out of day care or school, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) suggests doing so particularly if:
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The child appears to be severely ill.
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The child is not responsive.
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The child is irritable or persistently crying.
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The child has difficulty breathing.
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The child has a quickly spreading rash.
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The child has a fever above 101°F.
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The child has a behavior change.
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Other various signs and symptoms — like a sore throat, rash, vomiting or diarrhea.
However, kids do not need to be excluded from day care or school if they have symptoms like: the common cold, runny nose (regardless of color or consistency of nasal discharge), cough, yellow/green/white/watery eye discharge without fever, eye pain or eyelid redness or other symptoms noted on HealthyChildren.org, where you can also find information on how to proceed with formal diagnoses — like chickenpox, which is a definite no-no for attending school.
What changes could encourage healthier kids … and parents
“An unwell child can cause real issues for the school and lead to an illness affecting more children and teachers, too,” Essity Public Health Manager Liam Mynes says.
Essity is aiming to “expose and tackle the hygiene issues that are ultimately holding children back when it comes to health, wellbeing and education,” Mynes says.
Clearly, many of those issues center around parents not receiving the support they need from their employers. According to a 2019 Care.com survey, only about half of parents surveyed (48%) say their employer seems to care about their child care needs. And just 15% of working parents say their employer offers benefits like backup child care — but 86% say they wish they did. Meanwhile, parents continue to grapple with the cost of quality child care: 70% of families are paying rates the government defines as unaffordable, and nearly half of families spend 15% or more of their household income on care, according to the Care.com survey’s findings.
These are the issues employers and government would do well to consider if they want to create a positive, healthy change for kids and their parents.
