There's a running joke in my office that my three-year-old should be added to the payroll. Why not? She's earned it.
Coming back from maternity leave, I had two choices — park my daughter in a daycare or take her with me. I chose both.
Two days a week, she spends her day with a friend's mother-in-law, at an in-home daycare where she is the center of attention. The other three days, she goes to work with Mom. I have work, but she has me.
If that sounds like I'm simplifying things greatly, I am. The system my husband and I painstakingly crafted as the days of my pregnancy wound down is nothing if not imperfect.
As a reporter, I spend my days on the road. In the morning, we may be on a farm, chatting up the farmer about milk prices. Late morning, we'll move on to the county government center for a sit-down with the head of real property services to hash out tax issues, and then it's on to a lunch meeting with the undersheriff on the big drug bust. The afternoon may be spent at home, writing or making phone calls. Then again, we may be off to meet with the local high school baseball star.
Wherever I go, she goes — almost without exception. Which means she's been on farms, municipal buildings and sports complexes since she was eight weeks old, snuggled in a carrier or strapped in a stroller.
Wherever I go, she goes — almost without exception. Putting my baby on the "schedule" many attachment parenting proponents abhor was a must. I had to plan interviews around the first morning feed, the second morning feed . . . and so on. If I could get in a quick one while she napped in her carrier, all the better. There is no scheduling a sour stomach on the drive across town to catch up with a Nobel Prize winner; there is only a well-stocked plastic tub, filled to the brim with extra clothes, antibacterial wipes and stain-prevention spray. In the early days, there was a complementing container stocked with diapers and wipes; today there are pockets on the rear of the seats stocked with crayons, picture books and toy cars. My business emergencies are as much the yogurt drink spilled all over the backseat as they are the interview that's run over. "Mommy I have to go potty," is as common — if not more than — "off the record."
What does my employer think of it all? He didn't have to train a new person when I went off to have a baby, and he still gets me thirty hours a week to run here, there and everywhere. He's not putting her on the payroll, but he's not putting me out to pasture either.
A New York Times article about the increasing numbers of women taking their babies to work surmised, "The needs and noises of babies have the potential to be highly disruptive and to stir resentment among co-workers."
Said one workplace consultant, "The business of business is business. I think it's a little distracting to have children at the office."
That's precisely why I warn every potential interviewee that my daughter will be tagging along for the ride. On rare occasions, I've scrounged around to get a babysitter to fill in (for the rare day-time board meeting), but I have yet to be asked by an interview subject to leave the kid behind.
