Babies in the Workplace

provide parents with their own offices during the time the baby was coming in. Other companies found it beneficial to designate a room for parents to go to if they wanted privacy for nursing (or pumping), to give their baby some quiet time, or to take a baby who was unusually fussy on a given day.

Parents are going to be grateful to their company for implementing a baby program at all, and the great majority of them will take action on their own initiative if their baby is preventing other people from getting work done or if the parent is unable to successfully balance baby care with completing their own work. However, there may be rare situations in which a baby is causing regular problems but the parent is unable or unwilling to discontinue bringing the child on their own.

Making it clear to parents at the outset that the company can stop allowing the

Businesses should keep in mind the transition period described earlier--that it may take a week or two after a new baby first comes in for the baby and parent to adjust to the routine and the environment. Companies should also take into account the fact that sometimes babies have bad days--perhaps because of digestion problems or teething or other temporary factors. One option for dealing with this situation may be, after waiting a few days to see if it resolves itself, to ask the parent to find daycare with the option to bring the baby back a few days or weeks later if she becomes more content. It can be useful if parents have their own office with a door they can shut if the baby does cry for more than a few seconds or if the parent wants some privacy.

In many of these companies, parents were in cubicles or spent time in different places throughout the day. Some companies were able to temporarily