Working Caregivers Struggle with Back-to-School Season

It’s back-to-school season.  For many, that brings nostalgia about summer memories, excitement about new beginnings, and a sense of promise for all our children are going to achieve over the coming academic year.  New math skills learned, new books read, new friends made, and new sports played.  But back-to-school also requires financial and logistical planning that can be difficult for working caregivers.  The return to school can involve the added expense of new shoes, clothes, and supplies.  And, more often than not, it involves the orchestration of schedules that is reminiscent of a Tetris game. 

Once school starts, working caregivers must contend with pick-up times that take place before the work day ends, requests to attend school events in the middle of a workday, days off that don’t mirror any kind of work holiday, and unexpected sick days spent at home.  Caregivers want to attend their children’s activities, meet their teachers, and care for them when they’re at home sick.  But that’s often easier said than done.  The realities of having school-aged children exist regardless of prior work commitments and obligations.  For caregivers who work, the school schedule can be incompatible with a work schedule, requiring a degree of finesse to balance their child’s academics and their work.  Simply put, the school schedule was not made with working caregivers in mind.

Some working caregivers are lucky enough to have understanding employers, those who appreciate the challenges that working caregivers face and want to help them.  But not all employers are willing to accommodate employees when, for example, they need to take leave at the last minute or modify their schedule to attend to their caregiving needs.  Nor are they legally required to; employees are not entitled to any workplace accommodations by virtue of the fact that they are a caregiver, although they are protected against disparate treatment and adverse actions that are taken because of their status as a caregiver.  With insufficient legal entitlements, these employees are often left with no choice to exhaust their paid leave or take unpaid leave, sometimes risking their employment in doing so.  In DC, under the Parental Leave Act, employees who are parents or guardians are entitled to up to 24 hours of unpaid leave during a 12 month period to attend school-related activities.  In order to receive pay while on leave, employees can use family, vacation, personal, or compensatory leave, or, if there is one, leave from their workplace's leave bank.  But this is frequently not enough to cover all these different needs that arise over the course of a school year.  Needless to say, we need to do more to support our working caregivers.

So when you see a photo of a smiling child with a back-to-school sign, remember that behind that smiling face is a caregiver who is doing everything they can to support their child’s education and who is so excited to see the adventures that their child is about to embark on, but who may also be struggling to balance it all with work.

By: Rosalind Herendeen