Project (Non-)utilization of children's sick days by mothers and fathers

Welcome to the website of the research project ‘(Non-)utilisation of sick days for children by mothers and fathers – a challenge from different perspectives’.

We are delighted that the project, which is funded by the Lower Saxony Ministry of Science and Culture's ‘zukunft.niedersachsen’ funding programme and the Volkswagen Foundation and is initially scheduled to run for three years, was launched in November 2025. Together with project leaders Prof. Dr Golsch and Dr Ayhan Adams, project team member Anna Lotte Klennert, a doctoral candidate at the institute, will implement the research project.  A standardised survey of working parents and human resources managers will first collect data on the use, organisation, and attitudes towards sick days for children. The data obtained will then contribute to expanding the empirical evidence on the compatibility of work and family life, structures of inequality, and the signal effect of care work. Given the social and economic relevance of absenteeism and the increasingly important question of the balance between work and family life, we hope that by discussing the prevalence, accompanying circumstances, and consequences of sick days for children, we can contribute to a better understanding of the processes involved.