Joan Blades, is at it again, advocating people take their kids to work with them instead of either staying home to care for them themselves or hiring someone to care for them in their absence.
Fortunately, Joan does manage to admit that this idea will not work in all employment situations, but I think she is over-estimating how many people could make this 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.
Millions? Really? I’m hard-pressed to think of anything other than some white collar executive-type positions. And even a lot of those jobs would be tough to handle while breastfeeding, changing diapers, or while a fussy infant was wailing in the background.
Joan links to a New York Times article on the same topic, but she doesn’t mention a few things noted in that article:
Of course, disadvantages are clear, too. The needs and noises of babies have the potential to be highly disruptive and to stir resentment among co-workers.
Susan Seitel, president of WFC Resources, a workplace consulting firm in Minneapolis, put it this way: “The business of business is business. I think it’s a little distracting to have children at the office.”
Critics also say that both child and job could lose out because the parent can’t be 100 percent devoted to either one.
…
The most successful programs, Ms. Moquin said, are ones in which companies have written policies — to designate another employee as an alternate caregiver in case the parent is temporarily unavailable; to specify areas for breastfeeding or changing diapers; and to spell out the ages when children are allowed in the office. Usually, babies are allowed up until 6 to 8 months, or before they start to crawl.
Even women who advocate bringing babies to the office say it can be rough. “It’s far better for me to have my child at home. It’s hard to be your best work person and your best mom because you’re doing both things at one time,” said Denise McVey, president of S3, a 25-person advertising agency in Boonton, N.J., who brought her son to the office for his first eight months.
Borshoff, a communications firm in Indianapolis with 40 employees, has a Bring Your Baby to Work program for infants ages 6 weeks to 6 months. The firm pays 80 percent of an employee’s full salary when the child is in the office.
That way, the parent can devote energy to the child without feeling guilty. “It feels very fair,” said Susan F. Matthews, principal of the firm. “We keep time sheets so we can monitor productivity, and we see that parents really don’t maintain the same productivity levels.”
The New York Times, January 3, 2009
I don’t see a problem with having on-site daycare facilities – if a company wants to go to that expense. It takes physical space, hiring staff, insurance, etc. It’s not a cheap date. However, if the employees who needed these services were willing to pay for the on-site daycare centers, it would be a much more doable prospect for many companies. But that’s not what momsrising wants. Momsrising wants either the companies to foot the entire bill themselves or for the government to foot the bill/subsidize the project.
Joan Blades also doesn’t mention that one of the companies that allows employees to bring kids to work with them only pays those employees 80% of their regular salary, because they take into consideration that the productivity of those employees goes down. I’m going to have to go with a great big DUH on that revelation. But I’m rather surprised that line didn’t send Joan into a full blown seizure, since momsrising also has a problem with mothers getting paid less and being passed over for promotions more often than their nonprogenied counterparts, even though most employers will tell you it’s because the nonchilded worker works more… ergo, that employee gets paid more/advances faster. It’s a system that makes quite of bit of sense, if you actually stop to think about it.
Joan mentions the financial strain having a child puts on the parents several times, yet I don’t see any mention in her article or in anything on the momsrising website that advocates people actually doing any kind of financial planning before deciding to have a child. Wouldn’t that be the wise thing to do? Wouldn’t it make sense to save up before having a kid so that one or even both parents could take an extended leave of absence from his/her job or even quit altogether, if that’s what they want? Yes, it might be difficult, but for millions* of people, it’s possible.
Unfortunately, momsrising would rather have people popping out kids willy-nilly without any forethought whatsoever. Financial considerations? Bah!, they say. Just let the government foot the bill. If they can afford the tax bill that’s going to require, then they can sure as hell afford daycare or some time off work.
* Hey, if Joan can claim that there are “millions” of jobs that are conducive to having a bring-your-baby-to-work program, then I can claim that there are millions of jobs that pay well enough for people to be able to save in advance for the birth of a child.
Crossposted from Eriepressible 01/07/2009
