The hardest thing was having to make the decision to keep working and neglect my family needs, or leave and take the risk of being homeless again due to lack of income.    

If families do not have time to be present to deal with health and emotional issues, the family will break down. Stressed employees do not make good workers, so both employers and employees suffer when employees are at work while they are thinking of family members who need them   

The hardest thing about this situation was thinking of others who, if they had landed in our situation, would have been left out in the cold with no leave or unable to take the unpaid leave. 

Many families are not as lucky as ours. My children can take off work to care for their families. However, many people lose their money if they stay home with a sick child, or are sick themselves. This causes a ripple effect of more people getting sick. It is important to allow people family leave, so that our society is both healthier and richer.

The idea of even starting a family — you know, what people do and have done for millennia — is a foreign one to me because it means being an absentee father, having to work a tyrannical amount to make it happen. There's no way my partner and I could afford to live anywhere without one another.

The hardest thing about this situation was that my continued employment required 100% attendance, which made it both unaffordable and harder for my wife. The employer didn't care or want to hear about it, and told me to just get back to work and not bother them with personal issues.