About a year ago, one of my female colleagues at my former institution of employment had a child and, on occasion, needed to bring her child into the office to complete a few quick administrative tasks or pick-up some items from her office. Much to my surprise (and the surprise of the other parents in the building), she was reprimanded and told that children, especially infants, are not allowed in faculty offices. Infants in the workplace were considered unprofessional and her close proximity to the Dean's office (the Dean of the College of Education) made it especially problematic, according to the letter that she received.
I was reading a People magazine (I'll admit that this is one of my guilty pleasures) the other day while I was getting my haircut and I came across an article that described the new corporate phenomenon of bringing your infant to work. The article explained that several companies are piloting programs where workers are able to bring in their child and a crib into work, resulting in shorter maternity/paternity leaves, more productive parents, and a happier work environment. After all, who could be grumpy with a baby around. My immediate response was to praise these companies for bridging the gap between work and family and promoting young children in the workplace, contrary to the Dean's reaction to my colleague's behavior. Now, I am starting to ask questions about whether or not this practice perpetuates a system that values work over appropriate maternity/paternity leaves (I'll be posting soon about the issues with a 6 week leave). Are companies telling workers to return to work regardless of the health of the family? And, is this a practice that is healthy for the child?
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3 comments:
Jaime, I read the same article in People mag (same guilty pleasure) and asked myself the same question. If taking your infant to work is in lieu of maternity leave, then what may appear on the surface to be a family-friendly policy may actually be quite the opposite. Maternity leave is a sacred time - important for physical healing and emotional bonding. Taking your baby to work and leaving him/her in a pack-n-play while you travail is not a bonding experience; and I won't get into the myriad reasons why it would be very uncomfortable for a new mom to sit in an office chair for 8 hours a day right after birth.
Having said that, I have not yet taken my son to campus - not even to run an errand. I think I'm afraid to, even though I think everyone would be supportive and probably glad to finally meet him in person. I had one colleague who took her infant to faculty meetings, but she has since left the university and I can guarantee my child would not behave well enough for that to work out!
I wonder what the middle ground here might be.
What really strikes me is the lack of value that is placed on maternity leave in this country. I found a table of maternity leave comparisons from around the world (http://www.apesma.asn.au/women/maternity_leave_around_the_world.asp) and most countries offer at least 12-14 weeks, primarily paid 100%.
This new seemingly family-friendly option continues to erode the idea that maternity leave is needed at all.
Where is the middle ground? I hope that it is somewhere between 12 - 24 weeks of paid (100%) maternity and paternity leave.
I completely agree that maternity leave (paid!) is critical. But after leave, especially if you're breast-feeding, bringing your child along can make life a lot easier. My husband and I shared an office from the time our first child was about four months old until he started to walk. We brought him with us on days we both taught (usu. 3 days per week), handed him back and forth in between appointments, and hired a student to watch him for the hours when we both had things scheduled. It made life easier for us, and meant I could breast-feed until he was a year old without too much trouble. One colleague did move her office because she found the baby distracting, but it wasn't a big deal. (We actually didn't even ask permission to do this ahead of time -- we just did it.) But this probably would not have worked with our second child, who was a lot louder than our first!
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