Babies in the Workplace

them with intellectual stimulation that a baby who sleeps sixteen to eighteen hours a day just can't provide.

Enables Starting a
Family Earlier

In recent years our society has become aware of the growing number of skilled professional women who are postponing having children because they feel that they have to sacrifice either their career or their
ability to spend time with and raise their children the way they want to. Many of these women find that, by the time they are at a point in their careers where they feel able to take some time off to have children, their fertility has substantially declined. Even if they are able to get pregnant, pregnancy and birth tend to be more difficult at later ages, and there are higher risks of having babies with birth defects.

The situation has become an either-or proposition for many; they feel they can have a successful career or they can have children in their prime fertile years, but not both. For many of these busy career professionals, taking even three months off (and usually more) when their babies are born can come at a very high price for their professional reputation and employability, as Sylvia Hewlett describes in her book about the costs to women from "off-ramping."

The option to bring their baby to work for the first six months or so, however,
represents a compromise that can enable more of these professionals to feel comfortable having children before their biological clocks start winding down. It
also has the potential to encourage more of these professional people to adopt children if they are in a position to do so. Bringing their baby to work--and learning how to be productive at work while meeting