Peaceful Revolution: I Love Seeing Babies at Work!

MomsRising named this column A Peaceful Revolution because it is about envisioning and embracing culture change that enables parents to excel at home and at work. Win-win solutions are more accessible than most of us realize. This weekend the New York Times highlighted such an opportunity that far too few businesses are taking advantage of:

babies at work!

Yes there are jobs for which this is simply not possible, but there are also millions of jobs where keeping your baby with you is the most natural thing in the world. When you consider that the birth of a child is a leading cause of a "poverty spell" in America, this solution is one simple answer and it turns out it is good for business! (Paid family leave also diminishes the financial strain for new families and has been shown to increase employee retention as well. In CA a new parent can take six weeks of paid family leave, plus mothers who give birth get 6 weeks paid medical leave.)

The Parenting in the Workplace Institute has a database of more than 120 companies that welcome babies at work. They even have a book available "How to Start a Babies-at-Work Program" -- complete with guidelines and paperwork for employers to use so that they can ensure that having babies in their workplace will be a good experience for everyone. Bottom line: Work continuity, worker loyalty, and goodwill created by supporting a babies-at-work program pays off.

Imagine, then, being able to bring babies to work until they are six months old or crawling. Now that is civilized and it provides some economic security for new families! I still have a hard time accepting that some mothers in this country go back to work days after giving birth because they can't afford to both feed their family and care for their babies. (Have I mentioned that the U.S. is one of only four countries out of over 170 that have no paid family leave for new mothers? California, Washington, and New Jersey are the only states that provide paid family leave). With or without the benefit of paid family leave, businesses are discovering that welcoming babies at work at 4 weeks or 3 months is a smart move as well as a caring way to support parents who must work to care for their families.

Babies-at-work programs are not just for high-end jobs. As I read the stories about companies that took a chance on working differently, I am heartened that these companies are having peaceful revolutions that they are now sharing with others. This kind of thing can change our world. It's not for everyone or everywhere, but it works for far more than you might think.

A Peaceful Revolution is a blog about innovative ideas to strengthen America's families through public policies, business practices, and cultural change. Done in collaboration with MomsRising.org, read a new post here each week.

Comments

[ADP4]

Our American economy needs a huge revitalization, and this could be one piece of that. What we've got now is a 1950's model of a workplace, with one full time stay at home parent and one full time working parent making enough of a salary to care for the family. With inflation and the global economy, that is clearly not a working model for the vast majority of families anymore. We need a much more flexible, nimble, smart workplace than we have now. That includes innovations such as daycare in the workplace.

Without embracing new models of the workplace, including flextime, telecommuting and yes, daycares at work, the US economy will only sink even farther, even faster. Guaranteed. Time to wake up and truly improve how we do work.

[Gingerdoe]

Thank you ADP4 for an intelligent, forward-thinking comment devoid of cantankerous insults.

[UtahLiberal435]

Oh great! Now, in addition to taking all the work load (without added compensation) when mommies go on maternity leave, and taking all the work load (without added compensation) when parents return to the job and spend all their time showing off photos and calling the baby sitter, and hearing my boss say 'well, you should do this trip because he/she has kids,' now I'm supposed to deal with the distraction of crying babies and mommies/daddies running off to change diapers every hour.

That works out so well on 'bring your dog to work' days. Not. Productivity grinds to a halt.

Hell, half the folks in my office already have nanny cams hooked up to their PCs, so they can obsess on every burp and coo their precious genetic package emits.

Parents just don't get how much of their parenting they foist off on co-workers, and the rest of society in general. Your kid. Your choice. Your problem.

Babies are a commodity in gross oversupply. They are no longer valuable, so it makes little sense to subsidize their continued overproduction. And that means people who choose to have babies should, like every other species on the planet, have to work hard against increased odds to raise their progeny.

[Bethab]

RIGHT ON!!!!

[Gingerdoe]

It simply is not that big of a stretch for many, many companies to add day care on site, and/or let mothers who have offices bring their babies to work. Those that protest need to step back and take a hard look at who is saying it's not doable.

Why isn't it doable? Reserve a room, hire a day care worker 9-5 five days a week, get some insurance and boom. What do we all get? A ton of happier employees. Which equates to more productivity. Not less. Which means success. And success in America means more money for everybody.

Please do not tell me that this is beyond the means for the HMOs and the financial institutions and the banks and the Wal-Marts of America. You know, those institutions that are paying CEOs a bunch of millions per year? And they say that this small addition to boost productivity in such a great country as ours is not doable?

Who is lying to whom? Just what are our priorities anyway?

Thank you for listening.



This is not based on
Full disclosure: I don't have babies. I am not fond of all babies, but I like quite a few.

[mosh]

reserve a room and hire a day care worker . . . hmmmm a little on the skimpy side don't you think. Babies (aka infants) take loads of individualized care and attention - the scenario you describe sounds little better than an eastern european orphanage where babies are left to languish in cribs due to lack of interaction and adequate care givers, unless of course, you expect those working parents to be pitching in while they are at work and supposed to be - um - working? Not a lot of work would get done by the parent expected to supplement the child care of one day care worker in a reserved room.

My point is, infant care is much more complicated than you suggest - impacting everyone at the workplace - including the babies.

The ratio of baby - from newborn to 6 months - to day care worker should be at most 2 to 1 otherwise it would just be a warehouse for babies.

[Samalabear]

While I'm not sure babies in the office is the best thing, there needs to be something to keeps moms and their babies together, for the sake of both. Because of economic circumstances I had to go back to work two weeks after an unexpected emergency C-section. I would have been back to work within days of having my child had it not been for the C-section. My health suffered badly from this and so did my son's and my own mental well-being. Stress, stress, stress. Not good.

I still think a better solution would be not to have a society where it takes two people working full-time to be able to afford housing. This would solve a boatload of problems. Yeah, chain-store childcare industry wouldn't like this but it would be much, much healthier for families. This is only part of the solution, but I believe a big part, at least where it is not a single-parent situation.

[mosh]

you have hit on the real problem and the real solution - adequate pay -

[h0tr0d]

Why would you bring your baby with you to work ? Because the baby needs to be cared for. How do you account for the fact that you are now working part time, while you tend to your baby, but at full time wages ? This doesn't even begin to deal with the disruption a newborn creates in an office environment. This is nothing more than feminist fantasies about being paid to raise their children. Sorry, that dog won't hunt.