Babies in the Workplace

of the program. They discovered that the mother felt a lot of pressure to perform at 100% without having the ability to do so since she was also taking care of a baby. Sally said that as a result of this, the company clarified that it was "incumbent on the department heads to ascertain what supplementary resources were required for the parent," and the company gave managers the budgetary authority to provide those added resources. As Mark Tatara, the Art Director at Health Newsletters and a father who brought his own son to work, explained, the idea was that "additional resources would be brought on to supplement the parent's ability to completely do their job." He said that he thought it was important that a company really be aware of this risk and to ensure that other workers don't feel like they are constantly called upon to take on more work for the people who bring in their babies. All of the companies with baby

that the "employee is accountable for the same responsibilities as if no baby was there." This helps minimize resentment by other coworkers that might occur if a parent spent excessive time taking care of a baby while still being paid the same as an employee without a baby, and it also makes companies more comfortable with the baby program on the whole.

However, many companies acknowledged that, in practice, most parents were probably only about 70% to 80% as productive as normal while caring for their baby, but they generally made up for this by staying late as needed or taking work home if possible, because parents didn't want their coworkers to feel that they weren't doing their jobs. Some companies explicitly took into consideration the lower productivity of parents and planned for it. Sally Rynne, the founder of Health Newsletters, said that after the first baby had come in to work, they did an evaluation