Babies in the office
Via a chain of blogs, I found this flash photo-essay of "a day in the life of moms working at Mothering." (For those of you with slow connections, it’s a series of pictures of babies and children in the office, some being held on mommy’s lap while she types or talks, some playing on the floor, etc.)
Demi at Pilgrim’s Progress comments "There is no reason whatsoever to think that every office couldn’t look something like that."
The pictures are awfully cute, but I wouldn’t want to have to do my job while caring for small children at the same time. My experience with working from home, while caring for children at the same time, is that I always felt like I was doing an inadequate job at both parenting and my paid job, with neither getting my full attention. And I was totally frazzled, with never the opportunity to drink a cup of tea in peace — if it was naptime, I had to jump to get down to work. Add to that a less than entirely childproofed office, and it sounds like a total nightmare.
I definitely could imagine this working with a tiny infant, especially one who slept a lot, or who was content hanging out in a sling. It’s a lot harder for me to imagine bringing my toddler, whose favorite activities these days include: pulling things off shelves, taking things out of trash cans, putting things in trash cans, putting things in his mouth, and pulling on cords to see what happens. Or rather, it’s far too easy for me to imagine what would result. I could probably bring my preschooler to work in an emergency, but I’d have to let him use my computer all day (or bring in the portable DVD player) if I wanted to keep him out of trouble.
The discussion of this in the comments at Alas, A Blog also raise the question of whether this would be fair to other workers, as well as pointing out that not everyone works in an office. They’re worth reading.
Does anyone reading this get Mothering? The movie seems to go with the current issue, which features a cover story about bringing babies to the office, but it’s not available online. I’d be interested in hearing whether the story is all about the positives (not forcing people to choose between work and time with their kids) or if it discusses the negatives as well.
February 11th, 2005 at 1:01 am
If they can manage it, more power to them. But I have to agree with you. I know that when I want to sit for a minute and check my email or read a couple of things at the computer, my son needs to shake the paper clip holder upside down spraying tiny metal pieces in every direction or sit on my lap so that he can “type,” which never works because he’s opening new windows or minimizing the browser or scrolling down the page, etc.
February 11th, 2005 at 10:16 am
I completely agree with you. I’m a SAHM starting a graphic design business and I’ve just hired a sitter for 10hr/wk so that I have solid time to get work done. Certain work–like that involved in putting a magazine together–is more conducive to having babies around but many jobs simply cannot be done with a child at hand. If I go to my GYN, do I want him to have a toddler in the exam room with me? And what about restaurants? There’s a health and safety hazard!
This just goes to the idea that women are supposed to be able to do it all and do it all at the same time. Now it’s not enough that a woman is supposed to have a child, breastfeed that child until they go off to college, co-sleep with same child also until college, and hold down a full-time, high-powered career while maintaining an immaculate home and creating darling scrapbooks detailing their child’s every waking moment. Oh wait, I forgot that we’re also supposed to have perfect bodies that don’t reflect childbirth or aging. And now we also have to bring our darling children to the office with us and show them just how wonderful mommy’s office life is so that they can be fully integrated into our existence. Hell, why give birth? Why not just keep the baby inside of you forever?
Sorry, getting a little crazy here, but the level of guilt I am subjected to on a daily basis since giving birth is really overwhelming some days. Thanks for a fabulous blog that brings to light a lot of interesting issues.
February 11th, 2005 at 12:32 pm
I do subscribe to Mothering, but I hadn’t read the most recent issue. After reading your post, I pulled it out and took a look at this article. I think they do address the challenges of trying to work with your baby around, but I still think they are being rather unrealistic. Perhaps it would work in an environment that doesn’t have very high expectations for your productivity…
I tried working from home with my daughter from 6 weeks to about 4 months, when I quit because it just became completely unworkable. Granted, I think my daughter was at the more difficult end of the spectrum as she didn’t nap much and was only happy if in arms and moving (which made computer work all but impossible). My mom was able to take my brother in to work with her from 6 weeks to 6 months, but at that point she had to find outside care for him because he wasn’t sleeping as much and was also making more noise and needing more attention than she could provide during the work day. She said that she definitely wasn’t as productive during that time, and that was starting to show and cause problems.
A couple of quotes from the Mothering article:
About how to handle the frustrations of balancing everything –
“Beyond the difficulty of encouraging your colleagues to focus on the meeting despite a baby’s presence and occasional sounds, you’ll feel like an acrobat spinning plates as you try to remain aware of your child’s needs while participating in the discussion. Zen breathing, or similar prayer or meditation exercise, can help you train your mind to respond in a calm and focused fashion and can make your inner composure visible. ”
And the summary paragraph –
“The emotional challenge of working with your baby is a deep sense of frustration from never having enough time to focus on your job or your child. I found that the best way to combat this angst is a rigid and realistic view of my productivity. don’t try to do more than you can do, or you’ll cheat your child and never feel a sense of accomplishment — a necessary emotion for happiness at work”
This comment is getting really long, but I just also wanted to that it seems like the author is saying that if you can just lower your expectations of what you can get done, you can make it all work out. Now you just have to hope your employer is willing to lower their expectations as well…
February 11th, 2005 at 1:23 pm
Thanks for the comments, and especially to Amber for the quotes from the Mothering article.
I guess the question always is what’s the alternative?
February 11th, 2005 at 4:25 pm
Not really answering your question here, but….
When the babies were little, say from three months until six or seven or eight months old, Calder would take one baby into the office most Fridays. Calder is a professor, he didn’t lecture on Fridays, and he could handle one mostly immobile and mostly laid-back baby in his office while programming his computer, meeting with students and colleagues, and clearing his desk. He never went in for more than 5 or 6 hours with the baby, and he had to stop as soon as we (a) introduced solids and (b) had babies who crawled.
Just in the last month, Calder has let his ‘special Daddy outings’ run right up into office hours at work. He goes out on errands and for a quick meal with a child, continues on to work for 11am office hours, and then I come and pick up the child at noon. It’s a very isolated hour of time in which child and productive labor overlap. At home, he does quite a bit more labor during the kids’ waking hours, but here we start to run into those odd father-mother working-parent cross-currents. To wit: Calder is left to type, write, or read for whole hours at a time, indeed he can be sitting right next to a child who will scream bloody murder for help from–me. But I am rarely left alone for 15 minutes at a time on the computer, even though it’s been explained that I, too, am doing work.
I don’t know if it’s just that they’ve come to recognize the standard blog layouts and the Salon banner and know I’m full of crap, or if it’s the stay-at-home dynamic, or if it’s the Mommy dynamic. But I know I could never get much done at the office with a kid, and I always find the fantasy a little irritating.
The older I get, the more I think that great fantasy movie, “9 to 5,” got a lot right: on-site childcare, flexible hours, and lots of women in the boardroom. Of course, it’s interesting to consider that none of the three lead characters were, in fact, mothers. But at least I get to muse in public about a private fantasy: a new DVD release featuring commentary by Tomlin, Fonda, and Parton together. Priceless.
February 11th, 2005 at 4:57 pm
Aiyee! As a magazine editor, I can’t imagine bringing my 2.5-year-old daughter to work with me on a daily basis — or even an intermittant basis. It’s a job that needs quiet and concentration, and as much as I love my dear sweet little girl, quiet is not her strong point. When I try to work on the computer at home, she is single-minded in her desire to see what I’m doing and press the keys “just like mommy.”
There was one picture of a cute little boy sitting on his mom’s lap, reaching for the computer keyboard. All I can think of was what probably happened right after the picture was taken: “No, Timmy, don’t touch that…AGH! You just deleted six hours of substantive editing! Sob…”
It all goes back to the fundamental truth that everyone’s situation is different. If you are able to provide a safe, nurturing place for your child at work and do your job well, more power to you. For me, I think my daughter is much happier playing with her friends at day care (and taking gymnastics and taking music lessons) than she would be in my boring (to her) old office. As a matter of fact, she’s at a tea social right now, while I am reading about border development issues. I’m jealous.
February 12th, 2005 at 8:32 pm
Thanks for the thoughtful comments. I guess my conclusion is that to the degree that this is promoted as “here’s another possibility that you might not have thought of,” that’s terrific. To the extent that it’s promoted as “this is the best solution for everyone” or “gee, we’re letting you bring your kid in, so stop complaining about the lack of parental leave,” that’s not so terrific.
Jody, I definitely want to pick up on your point about which parent the kid yells for, but that’s a subject for a post of its own.
February 17th, 2005 at 10:16 am
I worked in an office once where the receptionist brought her child. It was an awful experience. I will never work in a situation like that again. It wasn’t fair to the child who was constantly in trouble for being a kid and touching things or making noise or to those of us who had to work around her.