Mom Fired For Daughter's Pinkeye Infection

The story of Dena Lockwood of Chicago, age 39, generated a lot of buzz. Dena, a single mother working to support her two children, was let go from a job she had held for two years, only minutes after telling her boss that she had to stay home and care for her daughter, Lily, who was sick with pinkeye. According to an ABCNews.com report, Dena asked her manager why she was being fired from her sales position at Professional Neurological Services Ltd. and he claimed that things with Dena weren't working out.

Dena pressed her boss further, "I told him that he certainly couldn't fire me just because my daughter had pinkeye, and I got no response." The lack of a response from her boss confirmed Dena's worst thoughts: That she was being fired because she had children and had to take a day off of work to care for one of them. In Dena's mind it was clear as day: she was being discriminated against because she had children. What was a working single mother of two supposed to do next?