The OP has provided a link to the story - I just listened to it again, and nope, we’re NOT talking on-site daycare. We’re talking babies (up to 6 months) actually IN THE OFFICE.
This is the sort of idea that would have sounded great to me before I had children and gives me the screaming heebie jeebies now … though I freely admit that probably has a lot to do with the personality of my eldest daughter, whose motto in the first six months appeared to be “Don’t you dare stop walking with me!”
Not only the job needs to be right for it, the personality of the baby needs to be right for it - and how could you tell that early enough to plan for it?
Also, babies are a distraction even when they’re happy and gurgling (a much NICER distraction to be sure, but still an attention grabber). Not to mention that sleep-deprived new parents don’t often make the most productive employees anyway.
I’m happy that it’s worked for some people (in fact I have a friend who did the same thing with her first daughter, quite successfully for a few months) so I know it *can *be done. But I can’t see it ever being successful as a general principle for most mothers.
Babies at work? Only if they are small enough to fit in the pneumatic tube mail delivery cannisters and be pffftttedd to some other poor bastard’s office.
In Cameroon it was SOP for the few women with jobs to take their babies to work. The receptionist at your hotel might have a baby on her back, or the mail clerk might be breastfeeding as she hands you your letters. Shop clerks and market sellers and stuff regularly had their babies.
It seemed like a good system to me, though I’m pretty laid back and life there was a lot slower paced than it is here. Most babies just slept anyway. At worst I’d end up with a short delay while she adjusted her baby carrier or something. Seems like a small price to pay.
It’d work better for some jobs than others, of course. But I think in general the American workplace needs to lighten up a bit, acknowledge people’s real lives, and slow down a bit.
I don’t have any kids, but where I’ve worked in the past I can’t imagine any of the women there wanting to bring an infant to work. But then again, where I live in Canada all the mothers I’ve worked with took a maternity leave that’s a full year (usually 50 weeks). I understand that in the US a one-year mat leave is unusual, and there’s no standard paid parental leave.
I can see how a new mother might be tempted to bring a one month old to work if she doesn’t have any other good options, but if you had a full year off then you might not be so nervous leaving your child for the day.
Parents and their babies (or children in general) can be divided into three types.
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Reasonable people with well behaved (although in a baby it isn’t really ‘well’ behaved - its just quiet) children who could have their babies at work (children in a restaurant) and it would work fine for most people most of the time.
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Reasonable people with children that won’t do well in the office (or restaurant), recognize this and arrange for sitters.
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People with the second type of children who look at the first group of people and say “they get to bring their baby into the office. I get to bring mine!”
The first two groups aren’t likely to be an issue in most offices - its the third group who will ruin it and offices will end up with a “no children without VP approval ever” policy.
Like when a kid puts a can of pencils in the teller tube and shoots a customer’s car :eek:
The US has been less than tolerant about family leave and working mothers and the like until very recently. I think it’s gotten WAY better in the last 10 or 15 years, but bringing the baby to work was Just. Not. Done. at the majority of companies.
The professor in the office adjacent to mine brought her first child to work for six months after her maternity leave was over (so he would have been from 6 - 12 months). It worked fine. She worked while he was sleeping or playing quietly in his portable crib, walked him up and down the halls if/when he got fussy, took him outside when he was crying louder than “fussy.” She ended up staying later to get her work done, but since we all have private offices, it was certainly less disruptive than the students who scream at each other down the halls between classes.
Not sure if it would have worked in a cube farm, though, even though he was an easy temperament baby.
I can’t tell you how much this new mother envies you Canucks. A one-year maternity leave is not just unusual, it’s unheard of for anybody I’ve ever known. You’re correct that there is no required paid parental leave. The Family Medical Leave Act requires that companies with more than 50 employees give up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to workers who have been with the company for at least a year. It’s also very difficult to find affordable, decent-quality daycare for infants. Around here, most places won’t take kids under 2, and the ones that will have a huge waiting list. Given the one-two whammy of a short parental leave and limited infant care, I can see why companies would consider allowing valued employees to bring their babies to work.
Um, what?
Not law school, but at Oslo university, it is perfectly acceptable to bring newborns to lectures. Older babies can be placed in one of the many university daycares, but infants are usually brought along. I don’t remember any baby crying even once, and usually they’re sound asleep.
I’ve had my son at work with me during working hours exactly twice - neither were my choice. The first time, he was about 5 months old, our daycare was closed for the day, and my father-in-law offered to watch him, but couldn’t take him until 11 AM. I had a lunch meeting that day that I had to set up for, so my then-manager encouraged me to bring him with me for the morning. Luckily, I worked in a close-knit office of all women, and he had enough people cooing over him that I could get ready for my meeting. However, I was very happy when my FIL picked him up! (He was starting to become mobile, and was NOT content to sit in one place).
I brought him to work with me a few months ago - he had just turned two. This was only for an hour at the end of the day, and since my office was remodeling, I was in a remote conference room and had NO way to bother anyone. I brought him a coloring book and markers, and some toy cars, and spent an hour hauling him back into my conference room.
It might be easier for mothers with less mobile or active kids to take their child to work, but mine will not come to work until he’s much older and it’s a necessity (which it hopefully will not be). There’s a good chance I may be home-officed in the near future, but he will still need to go to daycare full-time because the couple of times I’ve worked from home with him there, it’s been impossible to get much done.
OTOH - my dad used to take me and my brother to work on sick days or vacation days all the time. Granted, he is an insurance agent who shared a house/office with another agent, and he just sent us upstairs with pillows, blankets, and the black and white TV, and I’d read and watch TV all day. I remember doing this when I was 4 or 5.
My school’s listserv basically = most vitriolic posters on the Dope, taken up a notch and with a Clarence Darrow complex to boot. I never understood what all the fuss was about myself. If they squall, take them out. If it’s clear after a couple of lectures that you have a fussy baby, don’t bring him/her in. The only sticking point was that the way the desks are set up in the lecture halls, the parents would be hogging the seats at the front that were originally intended to be used by handicapped individuals. Also it’s pretty obnoxious to bring a squally anything in during the final Moot Court arguments or when we had a Supreme Court justice or famous person in to speak (got to meet Mr. Obama five years ago ;))
For a bunch of people who spend an entire semester pondering the reasonable person standard they sure as hell didn’t know how to apply it in real life.
My grandmother had had grandfather take my mother to work when my mother was a baby. He was an international streetcar driver (St. Stephen NB – Calais ME-- Milltown ME – Milltown NB). My mother was bundled up in a basket at my grandfather’s feet while he made the rounds.
In the winter, the family dog took over my grandfather’s child care duties. My mother was bundled up in a sled, which the dog pulled through Milltown NB and St. Stephen NB, visiting the post office and my Uncle Shark’s general store, before pulling her back home.
At my law school it was never an issue. A student had a baby, so the baby attended lectures with her. Had the baby caused disruptions, I expect that there would have been an issue, but as it was, the baby was quiet for the most part, and the mother took the baby out of the lecture hall whenever the baby started to voice an opinion.
I’d park the baby…not the ex…in the nursery.
But did you have an internal listserv? Because these days they seem to serve as anger management therapy for one’s more fumey classmates.
Anyway, the kidlets were vastly preferable to the classmate who used to bring her hairless cat to our school sponsored Thursday night binge drinking spree.
No, it’s completely inappropriate to bring your kid to work for anything more than a short visit. It’s distracting to the parent and to other employees. And of course, there is the legal risk to the company if the kid injures themself.
I brought my 6 month old baby to work in the physics lab when I was in grad school. I have a great picture of her in her playpen with the dilution fridge I was working on in the background. It was only me and my female adviser, and an occasional undergrad in the lab, so no problems.
We’ve had a baby here in my current office too. We’re almost all women here, and someone temporarily gave up their office that had a closing door so she could work with the baby in there. If the baby got noisy she just shut the door.
I think there are probably more situations where babies at work can be feasible than people probably realize. We don’t all work in cubes, or have frequent meetings and such.