I was listening to an NPR piece on the radio this morning talking about an emerging trend of bringing one’s babies to work. The piece’s interviewees were overwhelmingly positive about the prospect.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102774224
For me personally, crying/whining babies are worse than nails on a chalkboard for me and it would give me cause to look for another job. But I know I have less tolerance for babies than the typical person.
What do you think?
I would have no problem with it if there were the same expectations that I think hold for little kids in other public places – i.e., that you supervise your own kids, don’t allow them to make nuisances of themselves, take care of their needs and clean up after them yourself (not asking others to do it), and when they make a scene (including crying babies that can’t be quickly soothed), you take them outside, to the bathroom, to an empty room, or somewhere else where they will not disturb people.
I have a problem with babies in the work place when those informal rules are not observed – when the manager expects the secretary to watch/entertain her kids “for just a few minutes”, when the baby is allowed to wail, bothering everyone else in the office, when the kids are not supervised and are allowed to wander around disturbing other people.
I heard that story too, and while I get it in theory, I know that if the person in the next cube over had her baby with her, I’d probably get tired of it really quickly.
This trend may help curb the managerial class’ tendency to complain of “crybaby” employees.
I don’t think most people would think of “babies at work” to mean that the child is in your cube. I know of places that have on-premises daycare and you do your job and then you can spend your lunch hour with the baby if you want.
I worked at a furniture store that had a nursery for the shoppers to park the kids in. There was more than one occasion where my ex didn’t come home after a hard night of whoring around, and I would get permission to park him in the nursery for the duration of my shift.
I think most parents would be thrilled to have their daycare provider on premises. However, I would not want my child “in the cube” with me all day. I don’t think I would be able to concentrate on either the baby or the job. I suppose for some gigs, it would work.
No problem with on-premises daycare, think that’s a great idea! But no, I wouldn’t want a baby in a crib in a shared work space, that’s for sure.
On-premises daycare I’d have no problem with (assuming the daycare has a room or rooms entirely separate from the offices/cubes), but if we’re talking about babies in the actual working spaces of the office, I have a hard time seeing how those with babies are going to be able to be as productive as their non-babied co-workers. Babies require a lot of attention (and if you’re not attending your baby, you’re doing it wrong). And I’m paid to do my job – no one is paying me extra to do my job plus pick up the slack from those with babies. Not my baby, not my problem, and I would really resent anyone attempting to make it my problem.
This even aside from the impact on my own productivity due to constant headaches from hearing babies whining and shrieking. If ever there was a place to keep professional life and personal life separate, the office is it.
I have a hard time believing this goes on anywhere where the company’s had a serious look at the safety and liability issues. It sounds like a bunch of head in the sand, I’m-sure-it-will-be-fine thinking to me. If you are self-employed and want to do this, well, it’s your company and your kid.
On-site daycare, of course, is great. But consider all the safety precautions a daycare has to go through to get certified. Now we’re going to throw all that out the window and say the kid will be just fine in the cube farm?
Boy, the interns just seem to get younger every year. :eek:
How does one get anything done with babies at work? You are in a meeting and the baby starts to cry and you drop the call to walk him up and down the hall? Bounce him on your hip while you try and describe the methodology used to get the numbers for your analysis in the presentation you are giving?
When my son was an infant, I took him into work with me - I was still on leave and needed to do reviews - so he came into the office and did an afternoon of reviews with me. It was the only way to get the reviews done at that time, so it was a compromise we lived with - but it was a less than fully productive or professional compromise.
I brought my son to work with me full-time from the end of my maternity leave (he was 5 weeks old) until he was about 4.5 months old. I work for a very family-friendly, very small company, and there were only 3 other people who ever worked in the office (most of our employees work from home). It worked pretty well, because he was so small and slept most of the time. I wore him in a wrap all day and he was happy as a clam. It got harder toward the end, because he was getting to the point where he wanted to be entertained, but I still got all of my work done and was a lot happier than I would have been if I’d had to leave him all day. It was also nice that I could nurse him and not have to pump. My co-workers liked having a baby around (he stayed pretty quiet, and I took him outside when he didn’t). We don’t have clients come to our office, but the few that heard him over the phone commented that they liked being associated with a company that allows its employees that kind of flexibility.
It probably isn’t for everyone – I don’t give presentations or go to meetings with more than about 2 other people, I don’t see clients, I don’t even have to talk on the phone all that much – but it was great for me.
I brought my first son to work with me for his first year, but it was the kind of job that was well suited for it. I was working as a researcher doing a lot of programming. I had my own office, only interacted with other people on our team and had some support from others in the building if I had to attend a weekly meeting. I ended up getting a lot done during that year, mainly because I felt so relieved I was able to bring the little guy that I stopped all forms of killing time at work and was almost hyper-productive (didn’t want to give anyone a reason to change their mind).
I’m jaded, but I have no faith in the general population’s ability to keep the baby from being a distratction. I’m sure it works for individuals in particular jobs, but in general it seems like asking for trouble.
We had the length and scope of our annual “Bring Your Child to Work Day” because of some twits’ inability to keep their kids quiet and well behaved for a matter of *hours *last year.
If the parenting skills I’ve seen on display in restaurants are any indication, it would never work. For every nine well behaved parent/baby pairs at work there is the one who’s parent thinks their child can do no wrong. These parents think that everyone around them is as enamored with their baby as they are. That is seldom the case.
Add in the number of parents who work at home and still have to send their child to daycare or hire a babysitter to get anything done, and I really don’t believe it’s a concept that will catch on in general.
He sounds like a jerk and all, but making him stay in the nursery?!
I had to take both of my kids to work several times over the years and it was great sometimes, and sometimes it was hell on earth - me freaking out over every little loud noise or crying or just having to keep them entertained while I tried to quickly run through everything I had to do that day just to get home. I cannot imagine that it would have ever been a good choice for me - but then again, I would never have been a good candidate for SAHM stuff either. I would have gone insane.
I love my kids, but I need grown-up world sometimes.
Yeah, I can see how your scenario would be workable. The problem with that NPR story is that it gives the impression that bringing your baby to work has become trendy in all types of work environments, which I’m sure isn’t the case.
Yeah, it would definitely be harder in most other workplaces, I imagine. I also forgot to mention that my company and I had agreed that it would only last a few months – it was never an indefinite thing. And we agreed that if having him there was too disruptive for any of us, we would have to re-think things.
I wouldn’t have wanted to have him there much longer than I did (except for the savings in childcare costs, of course). And once he got mobile… ugh, no way!
I remember one issue that bitterly divided my law school at some point was whether it was acceptable to have babies in lectures. I seriously think the listserv saw more frothing on that point than over the Chief Illiniwek issue…though not nearly as much as the Supreme Court’s last decision on affirmative action.
On site daycare, yes. Children actually in the office, hell no.
I’m inclined to think there’s been some sort of misunderstanding. Bringing your baby INTO the OFFICE to work with you is insane. Except in some very unusual circumstances it’s preposterouly unprofessional and disruptive, and the liability issues make my head spin.