Babies in the Workplace

As our society comes to understand that these happy workplace babies are normal--and that immediately meeting a babies' needs helps them to become healthy and well-adjusted (not spoiled), babies, parents, and the rest of society will all benefit.

Socially Integrated Babies

The babies who went to work with their parents tended to be extremely social as toddlers and preschoolers. Babies learn more quickly during their first six months than at any other time in their life. By being taken to work with mom or dad, babies are immersed in a very social environment-- they become comfortable being surrounded by and interacting with lots of different people. Though children do interact with other children in day care settings, the relatively "artificial" environments of day care and schools provide limited

opportunities for observing and learning adult interaction techniques and social norms. Baby programs give babies the chance to be exposed to information about how adults interact in the "real world." Even though they may not consciously remember the lessons they learn, being in a work environment during those key months for absorbing information has a powerful effect on the social awareness and sensitivity of these children throughout their lives, benefiting these children and everyone that they ultimately interact with.

   Debbie Butler commented that she

   think[s] children [in the workplace] become
   accustomed to having other people around
   and are probably more social when it
   comes to having others hold them.

She said that they "respond to people other than their mother or father." Valley has had its program in place for about eight years,