Long Update on the Institute and Babies at Work
Things have been moving very quickly on the babies-at-work front, which unfortunately has completely overwhelmed me time-wise. I’m hoping for a bit of stability soon that will allow for more regular blogging about what’s happening.
1. USA Today published a front-page article about babies in the workplace. That led to a live interview on Fox Business Network in which they had a young baby on set; that piece seemed to be really well-received. It also led to several radio interviews across the country, in Britain, and in Ireland. Nearly every radio and television interviewer started out being very skeptical (frequently, the piece is introduced with the recorded sound of a screaming baby). In nearly every case, however, once we explained how and why these programs work in practice, the interviewer’s view shifted dramatically. For example, in an interview with BBC radio, the male host was initially very negative about the idea but ended up saying, “I agree with my guest . . . I think given just a few moments I would probably be cooing across the studio,” to which the female host remarked, “That doesn’t actually square with the kind of comments you’ve been making all afternoon!” Several callers to various radio shows talked about their own (positive) experiences with bringing their children to work, as well. It was encouraging to see how quickly people became open to the idea once they understood the details--such as that babies at work are highly content (and in the rare case that they do cry for more than a few seconds, parents are expected to remove them from the work environment temporarily), and that policy rules solved the other problems people were concerned about in theory (like coworkers playing with the babies instead of getting their own work done).
2. The USA Today piece was reprinted in many other newspapers, and three British newspapers printed related articles. One, in the Guardian, inadvertently makes clear just how critical it is to have clear guidelines in place when starting a baby program. The Guardian had three of their reporters bring their babies to work with apparently one day’s notice. There was no pre-planning, and the article appeared to basically describe everything that could possibly go wrong with allowing babies in the workplace. This is exactly the sort of thing that we believe the Institute can help organizations with by providing detailed policies and helping to educate parents about ways to keep babies happy while simultaneously being productive at work.
3. Just after its founding in December, 2007, the Institute had received $6,000 in initial funding from two baby-friendly companies, UNCLE Credit Union and Roxanne Conlin Law Offices. That (and the media coverage that really took off after the Time Magazine article in January) enabled me in February to drop my hours at my law firm (where I work as a floater legal secretary) to focus on the Institute three days a week (along with working on things at night and during spare moments on weekends). I quickly realized that, given the major skepticism of the public and businesses to these programs, we needed to “prove” the concept before this can really take off on a large scale. So I’ve spent much of my time in the last two months coordinating a “pilot” program, in which we plan to provide extensive information and documentation to several Massachusetts-based businesses, as well as (potentially) one multinational company, who are willing to try out a baby program. I elicited the support of two Harvard professors, Dr. Michael Commons and Dr. Patrice Marie Miller, for our work. They have agreed to design and implement formal studies in conjunction with this pilot. I have also been talking with a Boston-based producer for Nova who has worked with National Geographic TV, The Discovery Channel, and The Learning Channel. She is interested in helping us to put together a short documentary during the pilot, to give people a visual framework for understanding how these baby programs work in practice. Several prominent child development researchers have provided materials to help us develop informational documents for participating parents for the pilot (and on an ongoing basis), and we now have contacts at dozens of supportive organizations who will help to promote awareness of the pilot.
The only catch is that we need funding for me to be able to take the time to design materials and coordinate the pilot, as well as to support the studies and documentary (which we think are critical to utilizing the pilot to maximum effect), so I’ve been spending a lot of my time in the last few weeks looking for foundations, businesses, or other groups interested in supporting our work. The Massachusetts Breastfeeding Coalition has agreed to be our fiscal sponsor until we have 501(c)(3) status, which opens up a lot of options for grants. The Institute’s Board approved my using much of the initial funding as salary so that I could cut my hours and be able to focus on Institute work, but $6,000 doesn’t last that long in the Massachusetts economy, and last week it became clear that I’m going to need to return to my law firm full-time if something big doesn’t happen in the next few days. I’ll still do Institute work as much as I possibly can (in between work and raising Alpha and Echo), but I’m really hoping we can find a way to get funding soon to get this pilot off the ground. We have a tremendous opportunity to influence major societal change and potentially help millions of families and thousands of businesses, so we’re excited to find a way to move things as quickly as possible.
I spoke at a Women's Studies class at the University of Massachusetts--Boston on April 29, which went extremely well. The 80 or so students seemed to be very intrigued with the potential of babies in the workplace, and it was very fulfilling to be influencing the next generation's perspective on the viability of integrating family and work in this way.
A friend shared information with me on Friday (yesterday) about a few Massachusetts-based foundations that I had not previously located. I am working full-time this week and next week at my law firm (they needed extra help these two weeks, and I can use the income). I was planning on using my lunch break yesterday to finalize inquiry letters to these foundations, but I ended up being swamped by another major media inquiry triggered by a long public radio piece that aired Friday about babies in the workplace. I’m fortunate that my law firm is supportive of my babies-at-work efforts, so I was able to juggle the research and coordination for the media person with getting work done for the attorneys I was helping yesterday. I’m hoping to find time this weekend to get the applications done for the foundations and to get those out on Monday. We’ll see where things lead...
