I used to have latitude to allow nursing mothers on my team to be primarily WFH until they had day weaned (coming in for special meetings might still be necessary, but not for day to day work). Unfortunately, my company no longer gives me that discretion, which is really frustrating.
Edited to add: we give almost 6 months paid leave, so this only helped women who day nursed past six months, but I did have 2-3 employees who took advantage of this and it was huge in terms of their job satisfaction, retention, and productivity.
With 5 children, 2 of whom I birthed and reared through undergrad and grad school, I have seen and experienced many accommodations for parents and their children. But for some reason, the one that comes to mind now is the extra wide, close to the destination building, right next to the handicap ones, parking spots, complete with signs specifically designating them for families with young children. I’ve seen this in exactly 2 places ever and I LOVE it. Not sure if I’d actually rank it as the *best* accommodation for families, but certainly one of the most unique ones I’ve seen to date. It proclaims loud and clear, “You are welcome here and moreover, we want you and your children to not be dead.”
I am very grateful (and slightly (but only slightly) irked that I feel so grateful because it should be more normal!) to the company I work for part time for accommodating childcare needs. When my boss was asking me how available I could be to work remotely (online teaching), I mentioned that I would have a very young child who was still breastfeeding. Nonplussed, he said, 'yeah, but surely if you need to feed the baby, just [makes a gesture] lift the camera up a bit more if you need'. His casual okayness with a baby being near or even on the call was a real breath of fresh air. He didn't seem to think that caring for a child would impact my ability to work well. And because he's the boss, this attitude is carried by the rest of the company (broadly). When I was first scheduling my lessons, I asked them to allow me time between scheduling of lessons so I could go and breastfeed in comfort. They did so. And now they also have a more generous maternity leave policy (12 weeks of 90% pay, then the rest is statutory (UK based here) and a real understanding of flexibility in terms of how childcare situations crop up sometimes. And when I had my first baby, she was welcome at the staff Christmas party, at just 5 weeks old. They're all fairly minor things for a company to do, but they really mattered to me in a big way.
The accommodations I've been most grateful for - or most offended to be denied - have all had to do with whether my babies/children have been allowed to accompany me to places. Especially places I need to receive physical care from, during this stage of life where I pour so much of my physical stamina into growing and caring for my children.
The OBGYN's office where you can only bring one person with you (not two kids, or a kid and a husband!) - boooo.
The midwife, the physical therapist, and the chiropractor who each have a room with kids' toys as well as staff who will hold your baby or keep an eye on your other kid(s) - yessss.
Before the jury was sent to deliberate, Matonich told them, “There is not a lot in this world that we get to control, I think we are all aware of that every day but one of the things we can control is the number of children that we decide to have. That control was taken away from Mr. and Mrs. Szlachtowski through Minnesota Urology’s negligence. Now you get to control what happens next.”
Leah - respectfully - your use of Yiddish is inappropriate. It would be transparently odd for someone without Yiddish-speaking heritage to use Yiddish in the way that you do; it would also be odd for someone whose family several generations ago spoke a certain language, but who does not herself speak that language, to regularly use expressions from it in conversation with non-speakers. All the more so in the case of "verklempt", since you regularly misuse it: in Yiddish the word has an unambiguously negative connotation, i.e., is very much not a synonym for "moved" (see https://momentmag.com/verklempt/).
In this case, it is particularly distasteful because Judaism is not a set of "colorful" or "emotive" expressions that can be borrowed, used to signal heritage, etc; it is an extant religion. While you may have personally renounced it, that does not give you the right to disrespect those who have not.
For each of our kids' births, my husband was able to take a few weeks' parental leave through our state's Temporary Caregiver Insurance program, which most workers in the state pay into. He got a decent fraction of what would have been his normal paycheck, and it meant he didn't have to try to wrangle a parental leave specifically out of the company he was working for at the time (which was super-stingy when it came to benefits and off-time). So while his leave may not have looked like much compared to the more generous system at my own job, I still appreciated it so much with our first kid especially, when everything was so new for both of us as parents.
I know my home state (California) has 8-weeks paid for dads and a lot of other states have 12-weeks paid for each parent plus extra weeks of temp disability for the last month of pregnancy and the first 6-8 weeks pp. So a new mother in, let’s say, New Jersey, would have a total of paid a total of 22-weeks minimum, while mothers in most of the “red” states would only be eligible for 12-weeks unpaid. Quite a disparity!
I brought my six month old twins to a professional conference and while I was working my shift staffing our booth I pretty much always had one of them with me! Our booth was very popular that year 😁
I was able to switch to 32 hours (M-Th, 8hr days) with full time benefits (salary pro rated) at my engineering job for 2.5 years after the birth of my first child. It was so helpful; both for my sanity and my childcare arrangements.
The bookstore I work at is constantly overrun with kids - it's primarily a homeschool curriculum store but we also have the corner on classics in Canada. My boss *started* this accommodation - bringing your kids to work when you have to. She has 4. She is the owner, and those kids have grown up running helter-skelter, reading in odd nooks and crannies, and entertaining the customers with their jokes. Everyone (including me) she's brought on are working moms, and my son started mowing her lawn at 12, working in the store at 13? 14? and one of the adult children (of one of the employees) is now the full-time shipper.
My ability to work part-time has meant that we can both justify and afford having a nanny instead of putting our son in daycare. This means that a dear friend of hers is also able to earn a stable income, and has found a calling that she loves and will hopefully be able to continue even after she isn't *our* nanny anymore. On top of all that, I get to have just enough of both SAHM-ing and professional work. A win for all involved!
When my first was born, my husband was doing a postdoc and I was working as a technical writer. My company agreed to drop my weekly work hours to 20, and asked me to come in to the office for one full day a week (this was 23 years ago, before remote work was a thing). My husband got permission to stay home on Mondays and go in on Saturdays instead, so we were able to have care for our daughter covered without having to pay any providers (no family anywhere near us at the time).
Gotta say, I can't follow anything Emily Oster after the disgusting article she wrote about a pandemic amnesty and the way she described the damage she did to her children in her fear. Evidence based parenting my ass.
Interesting. I looked up her article about the pandemic amnesty and... it seems really reasonable and balanced to me and not at all disgusting. In fact I admired her ability to rethink her past choices and to admit that she'd made mistakes. To be able to say: "I was wrong" takes courage. And I appreciate the point she makes about people on all the sides making mistakes because of uncertainty and also because of fear. Humans are not at our best when we are acting out of fear and uncertainty. We make mistakes. But wisdom is the ability to learn from our mistakes.
Another good accommodation for parents that my family has experienced is working from home.
I'm a homemaker as it is, but the fact my husband works fully remote means he can do quick but useful things throughout the day. E.g. he can bring home the schoolkid from the bus stop if I'm out with the other kids, or provide a second set of hands when loading the kids and related items into or out of the car.
I love being the primary, full-time parent, but I don't love being the ONLY adult around during snafus like when one kid is peeing on the floor, one kid is refusing to come inside, and one kid is crying, all at the same time. It's not historically normal to have to be alone in those situations. And thanks to remote work, I don't have to be anymore! It's pretty great.
If I were an employee myself, I'd find working from home even more important. It probably wouldn't let me actively parent while working - ideally my husband would be available to parent during my work hours - but it would at least let me breastfeed throughout the day. I think it's inhumane that our society has normalized prematurely separating mothers and babies, forcing them to wean or pump. Sometimes I hear about "accommodations" that sound like a dystopian nightmare to me. I even imagine they would sound cruel to any mammalian mothers. But of course things can always be worse, so relative improvements are worth appreciating.
Really, the accommodation for parents (and children!) that I'd like to see our society invest in is lengthy parental leave. Something like one year for mothers only and an additional two years that could be used by either parent. Ambitious, I know.
I *love* this picture of you and your little sweetie! (Incidentally, I gave a keynote speech to the ASP and took a lot of inspiration from your speech at the '23 convention).
I used to have latitude to allow nursing mothers on my team to be primarily WFH until they had day weaned (coming in for special meetings might still be necessary, but not for day to day work). Unfortunately, my company no longer gives me that discretion, which is really frustrating.
Edited to add: we give almost 6 months paid leave, so this only helped women who day nursed past six months, but I did have 2-3 employees who took advantage of this and it was huge in terms of their job satisfaction, retention, and productivity.
That is a big deal! I’ll be primarily wfh until 6mo, but then I’ll need to pump two days a week :(
With 5 children, 2 of whom I birthed and reared through undergrad and grad school, I have seen and experienced many accommodations for parents and their children. But for some reason, the one that comes to mind now is the extra wide, close to the destination building, right next to the handicap ones, parking spots, complete with signs specifically designating them for families with young children. I’ve seen this in exactly 2 places ever and I LOVE it. Not sure if I’d actually rank it as the *best* accommodation for families, but certainly one of the most unique ones I’ve seen to date. It proclaims loud and clear, “You are welcome here and moreover, we want you and your children to not be dead.”
I am very grateful (and slightly (but only slightly) irked that I feel so grateful because it should be more normal!) to the company I work for part time for accommodating childcare needs. When my boss was asking me how available I could be to work remotely (online teaching), I mentioned that I would have a very young child who was still breastfeeding. Nonplussed, he said, 'yeah, but surely if you need to feed the baby, just [makes a gesture] lift the camera up a bit more if you need'. His casual okayness with a baby being near or even on the call was a real breath of fresh air. He didn't seem to think that caring for a child would impact my ability to work well. And because he's the boss, this attitude is carried by the rest of the company (broadly). When I was first scheduling my lessons, I asked them to allow me time between scheduling of lessons so I could go and breastfeed in comfort. They did so. And now they also have a more generous maternity leave policy (12 weeks of 90% pay, then the rest is statutory (UK based here) and a real understanding of flexibility in terms of how childcare situations crop up sometimes. And when I had my first baby, she was welcome at the staff Christmas party, at just 5 weeks old. They're all fairly minor things for a company to do, but they really mattered to me in a big way.
The accommodations I've been most grateful for - or most offended to be denied - have all had to do with whether my babies/children have been allowed to accompany me to places. Especially places I need to receive physical care from, during this stage of life where I pour so much of my physical stamina into growing and caring for my children.
The OBGYN's office where you can only bring one person with you (not two kids, or a kid and a husband!) - boooo.
The midwife, the physical therapist, and the chiropractor who each have a room with kids' toys as well as staff who will hold your baby or keep an eye on your other kid(s) - yessss.
Worth a read: https://www.startribune.com/11-million-awarded-to-parents-in-wrongful-conception-lawsuit-over-misread-vasectomy/601180209?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsalert
Before the jury was sent to deliberate, Matonich told them, “There is not a lot in this world that we get to control, I think we are all aware of that every day but one of the things we can control is the number of children that we decide to have. That control was taken away from Mr. and Mrs. Szlachtowski through Minnesota Urology’s negligence. Now you get to control what happens next.”
Oy gevalt
Leah - respectfully - your use of Yiddish is inappropriate. It would be transparently odd for someone without Yiddish-speaking heritage to use Yiddish in the way that you do; it would also be odd for someone whose family several generations ago spoke a certain language, but who does not herself speak that language, to regularly use expressions from it in conversation with non-speakers. All the more so in the case of "verklempt", since you regularly misuse it: in Yiddish the word has an unambiguously negative connotation, i.e., is very much not a synonym for "moved" (see https://momentmag.com/verklempt/).
In this case, it is particularly distasteful because Judaism is not a set of "colorful" or "emotive" expressions that can be borrowed, used to signal heritage, etc; it is an extant religion. While you may have personally renounced it, that does not give you the right to disrespect those who have not.
For each of our kids' births, my husband was able to take a few weeks' parental leave through our state's Temporary Caregiver Insurance program, which most workers in the state pay into. He got a decent fraction of what would have been his normal paycheck, and it meant he didn't have to try to wrangle a parental leave specifically out of the company he was working for at the time (which was super-stingy when it came to benefits and off-time). So while his leave may not have looked like much compared to the more generous system at my own job, I still appreciated it so much with our first kid especially, when everything was so new for both of us as parents.
I know my home state (California) has 8-weeks paid for dads and a lot of other states have 12-weeks paid for each parent plus extra weeks of temp disability for the last month of pregnancy and the first 6-8 weeks pp. So a new mother in, let’s say, New Jersey, would have a total of paid a total of 22-weeks minimum, while mothers in most of the “red” states would only be eligible for 12-weeks unpaid. Quite a disparity!
I brought my six month old twins to a professional conference and while I was working my shift staffing our booth I pretty much always had one of them with me! Our booth was very popular that year 😁
I was able to switch to 32 hours (M-Th, 8hr days) with full time benefits (salary pro rated) at my engineering job for 2.5 years after the birth of my first child. It was so helpful; both for my sanity and my childcare arrangements.
The bookstore I work at is constantly overrun with kids - it's primarily a homeschool curriculum store but we also have the corner on classics in Canada. My boss *started* this accommodation - bringing your kids to work when you have to. She has 4. She is the owner, and those kids have grown up running helter-skelter, reading in odd nooks and crannies, and entertaining the customers with their jokes. Everyone (including me) she's brought on are working moms, and my son started mowing her lawn at 12, working in the store at 13? 14? and one of the adult children (of one of the employees) is now the full-time shipper.
Kids! everywhere! It's a great place to work. <3
My ability to work part-time has meant that we can both justify and afford having a nanny instead of putting our son in daycare. This means that a dear friend of hers is also able to earn a stable income, and has found a calling that she loves and will hopefully be able to continue even after she isn't *our* nanny anymore. On top of all that, I get to have just enough of both SAHM-ing and professional work. A win for all involved!
When my first was born, my husband was doing a postdoc and I was working as a technical writer. My company agreed to drop my weekly work hours to 20, and asked me to come in to the office for one full day a week (this was 23 years ago, before remote work was a thing). My husband got permission to stay home on Mondays and go in on Saturdays instead, so we were able to have care for our daughter covered without having to pay any providers (no family anywhere near us at the time).
Gotta say, I can't follow anything Emily Oster after the disgusting article she wrote about a pandemic amnesty and the way she described the damage she did to her children in her fear. Evidence based parenting my ass.
Interesting. I looked up her article about the pandemic amnesty and... it seems really reasonable and balanced to me and not at all disgusting. In fact I admired her ability to rethink her past choices and to admit that she'd made mistakes. To be able to say: "I was wrong" takes courage. And I appreciate the point she makes about people on all the sides making mistakes because of uncertainty and also because of fear. Humans are not at our best when we are acting out of fear and uncertainty. We make mistakes. But wisdom is the ability to learn from our mistakes.
https://archive.ph/ozjE5
Another good accommodation for parents that my family has experienced is working from home.
I'm a homemaker as it is, but the fact my husband works fully remote means he can do quick but useful things throughout the day. E.g. he can bring home the schoolkid from the bus stop if I'm out with the other kids, or provide a second set of hands when loading the kids and related items into or out of the car.
I love being the primary, full-time parent, but I don't love being the ONLY adult around during snafus like when one kid is peeing on the floor, one kid is refusing to come inside, and one kid is crying, all at the same time. It's not historically normal to have to be alone in those situations. And thanks to remote work, I don't have to be anymore! It's pretty great.
If I were an employee myself, I'd find working from home even more important. It probably wouldn't let me actively parent while working - ideally my husband would be available to parent during my work hours - but it would at least let me breastfeed throughout the day. I think it's inhumane that our society has normalized prematurely separating mothers and babies, forcing them to wean or pump. Sometimes I hear about "accommodations" that sound like a dystopian nightmare to me. I even imagine they would sound cruel to any mammalian mothers. But of course things can always be worse, so relative improvements are worth appreciating.
Really, the accommodation for parents (and children!) that I'd like to see our society invest in is lengthy parental leave. Something like one year for mothers only and an additional two years that could be used by either parent. Ambitious, I know.
I *love* this picture of you and your little sweetie! (Incidentally, I gave a keynote speech to the ASP and took a lot of inspiration from your speech at the '23 convention).
I saw you were on the schedule but I didn’t get to attend! If you have a copy of the written speech, I’d love for you to email me
This is a good one, eh?