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We were fortunate enough to be asked to contribute a blog for the Huffington Post; it was posted today. It is about babies at work and their potential for increasing the number of people-friendly programs in workplaces. It was posted on the main page and in the business section:
A Peaceful Revolution: Bringing Humanity to the Workplace
A major Brazilian television show, Fantastico, just aired a piece yesterday on babies in the workplace that included video footage of my explanations of these programs and repeatedly showed the Babies in the Workplace website. The piece is about 5 minutes long and is in Portuguese. It is visually a very beautiful piece and has a very positive focus:
In the United States, parents bring babies to the office and increase productivity at work.
Since the Institute is starting to get funding, it's enabled me to justify cutting back my hours at the law firm in which I work. Starting this week, I'm going to be spending two or three days a week focused on Institute work (instead of squeezing everything I need to do into lunch breaks, during the kids' weekend naps, and in the early morning hours) and the other days doing the legal secretary thing. Today I had an Institute-focused day, but I needed to print out a couple of things prior to replacing my recently-deceased printer. So I stopped by one of my firm's offices, taking my daughter, Alpha (who is 6), with me. She was fantastic--she drew on my laptop, drew pictures on paper, played on my phone, and was friendly to everyone in the office. I was able to get my work done quickly and efficiently because she was so accommodating--and she was just happy to be with me, even though we didn't get to play much on this particular morning. Everyone who saw her seemed very glad to see her and asked me to bring her in more.
Since Alpha was old enough to understand, I've made it clear to her that she could occasionally come to the office with me (like on weekends or on a day off if I had to drop by for a bit) but only if she was respectful of the office environment. She understands very clearly what the expectations are and knows that the reason I continue to take her is that she is very well-mannered and nice to be around.
I think making those sorts of expectations clear to children (and, of course, understanding your child's individual personality and working within that framework) is critical to a parenting-at-work program. All too often, when people think of children at work, their first thought seems to be something along the lines of "toddlers running madly through the halls destroying the computers." That's obviously not what I'm advocating. Part of raising children is teaching them social norms--and when a parenting-at-work program is set up with clear expectations, those "disaster" scenarios are very unlikely to happen. What happens, instead, is that the children who come to work are the ones who are well-behaved (or, if they have a bad moment, their parent temporarily takes them away from the social situation), and they learn quickly to adjust to the culture of the workplace--so the workplace benefits from the enjoyment-of-life attitude that children exude, with none of (or very little of) the "inappropriate" behavior that so many people seem to fear about children at work.
Children are far more intelligent and sensitive to their surroundings than many people realize. Successful parenting-at-work programs acknowledge and enable the best in parents and children, as well as the best in society.
Sorry, again, for the delay in posting. It's been a very busy few weeks, but very good ones for the parenting-at-work concept.
The Arizona Daily Star printed a long article about babies at work:
Office shows that it can work for tots, moms, co-workers
The Parenting in the Workplace Institute was featured in a piece on the Today Show on January 31, 2008:
Bringing Babies to Work
Then, on February 3, 2008, the NBC Nightly News aired a similar piece which also featured the Institute:
Can't Part? Take Your Baby to Work
A widely-watched variety show in Brazil, Fantastico, is planning to air a piece in the next few days on babies in the workplace which will include the Institute.
What I find most exciting about all this is that the concept of babies in the workplace is finally starting to be recognized as a viable concept--one that might have widespread applicability. There is obviously still a large proportion of society that is very skeptical of the idea, but part of the Institute's work is to help to overcome that skepticism through evidence--such as by helping major companies to start successful baby programs.
The increasing support for the Institute and for the possibilities of parenting in the workplace is going to enable me to devote a lot more time to this work in upcoming days, so posting here will be a lot more regular.
