An interesting point of view, huh?
The New York Times on the Web
http://www.nytimes.com
Child Care and Other Traps
September 2, 2000
By CAMERON STRACHER
In the ultimate triumph of family-friendly policies, the white-shoe
law firm Chadbourne & Parke has converted a spare office into a
nursery for the infant of one of its female partners. Now this
mother can visit her baby and still stay on top of what's in her
in box. According to a firm press release, when it's time for
this mother to feed her baby, she is alerted by an e-mail or a
quiet knock on the door from her nanny. The firm has another
female partner who works from home a couple of days a week and
still another who manages its Moscow office while she is on
maternity leave in Washington, D.C. It is receptive to opening
more nurseries in its offices as the need arises (imagine the
sitcom possibilities).
Corporate policies like this are hardly unusual these days, as
companies struggle to make the work environment more amenable to
the needs of people with families.
But are families always best served by such policies?
Granted,
for many parents who can't afford nannies and must work, on-site
day care is a lifesaver. And being able to work from home while
on maternity leave is certainly better than having to cut short
one's time off. But such "benefits" have also become yet another
device -- like the pager, cell phone and wireless Internet access
-- that shackles us to work while purporting to set us free.
We are witnessing the transformation of the workplace into the
home -- complete with kitchen, sleeping rooms and baby nursery --
and the home into the workplace. Vacations aren't vacations
anymore, and coffee shops have become second offices. We
measure our value as employees by the number of e-mails we
receive and how often we are beeped.
Family-friendly policies are not so friendly when they end up
keeping families apart and intruding on space that was once
sacred, both in the home and in the office. The mother who brings
her baby to work is less likely to go home to have dinner with
her husband. The father who can access his e-mail from home is
less likely to read a book to his children. Let's be honest:
Isn't that why companies institute such policies? They want their
employees to be more productive -- to spend more time working.
Being forced to leave the office at 5 p.m. because your baby is
at home, not working weekends, taking a six-month maternity leave
instead of a three-month leave -- these are good things. By making
work easier, companies are actually making home life harder.
They offer us a path of least resistance and help us avoid the
hard choices we should be making. Work or family? Home or
office? We can't have it all. Nurseries are a nice touch to keep
the working parent at work, but they won't replace the real thing
-- ankle restraints.
Cameron Stracher is a contributing editor at the American Lawyer
and author of "Double Billing: A Young Lawyer's Tale of Greed,
Sex, Lies and the Pursuit of a Swivel Chair."
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