The Parenting in the Workplace Institute (PIWI) has a vision of a world in which interacting with babies is just part of a regular day at the office. For nearly 150 confirmed businesses and more than 1,600 babies, this world is already a vivid and enchanting reality. Will you help our Institute to bring this reality to thousands of other businesses and millions of other families?
We are prepared to enable a dramatic expansion of this world in which babies are welcome to come with their mothers or fathers to work every day and parents care for their children while doing their jobs.
- A world in which bank tellers and grocery store employees cuddle their babies while helping clients, and customers come to the businesses more often specifically to visit the babies
- A world in which coworkers and managers start out skeptical about starting a babies-at-work program, but then find themselves bonding with the babies and wanting them to continue coming to work
- A world in which parents can stay with their babies and support their families at the same time.
- A world in which both men and women in the workplace provide a social network for these new families and volunteer to help care for the babies.
- A world in which the business benefits of these programs are so momentous that executives rave about how integral a baby program has been in the success of their business.
PIWI has already helped five businesses to set up successful and sustainable babies-at-work programs. We have documented successful baby-inclusive programs in law firms, consulting firms, retail stores, credit unions, government agencies, and even in the offices of manufacturing companies, as well as many other kinds of businesses. We know that well-structured baby programs work in companies as small as three employees and as large as three thousand.
We believe that many other companies have experimented with allowing babies at work. We want to find and celebrate these companies. We want to build a network that includes people around the world who want to join us in showing that parenting in the workplace can be the bridge between career and family that our world has been seeking for so long. We want to show that parenting at work transforms businesses, builds strong families, and will revolutionize our world.
We are planning to implement a fully-supported and thoroughly-documented pilot babies-at-work program in one mid-sized company in the near future to show the transformation and benefits that occur when babies start coming to work. We will then begin the next wave of simultaneous pilot programs in several companies in a range of industries and sizes. These pilot programs will be featured in a documentary by Chithra Jeyaram, a graduate student at the University of Texas, Austin, who is pursuing an MFA in film production. We will be featuring the ongoing progress of these pilot programs on our Babies in the Workplace website, blog, and Facebook page, as well as through various partner organizations.
Babies-at-work programs and PIWI have been discussed in dozens of major media pieces in recent years, including the New York Times, National Public Radio, Time Magazine, People Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, NBC Nightly News, Fox Business Network, the Today Show, the Boston Globe, USA Today, American Lawyer Magazine, Workforce Management, Redbook, and Inc. Magazine, among many others. As we show that we can successfully implement these programs in large and small companies of nearly every type, we expect that the publicity (and public awareness of the viability and benefits of babies at work) will expand dramatically.
DragonflyTV, a media company in the United Kingdom, is seeking a UK company right now to participate in a two-day babies-at-work trial; they will then be working with the BBC to propose and develop a series specifically about babies-at-work programs (please contact them or us if you have questions or know of any companies in the UK that might be willing to participate). The need for and interest in babies at work is growing, and PIWI is prepared to do whatever it takes to take this concept to its full potential.
We are building a team to ensure that we can provide the best possible resources and assistance to expand babies-at-work programs (and, eventually, sustainable parenting-at-work programs for children of all ages). We are working with high-quality child development researchers and advocates to provide resources and information to parents about how to keep babies happy and healthy, and we will be providing comprehensive lactation support for mothers who want to nurse. We are collaborating with MomsRising (a prominent advocacy group for family-friendly policies with more than a million members) and their new initiative CustomFitWorkplace.org. As soon as we raise the money for the filing fee, we will be applying for 501(c)(3) status so that we have more options for funding our work.
We want to show that babies are being brought to work in hundreds of businesses already—by fathers and mothers—and that they can be successfully brought to work in thousands more. We want to grow our list of baby-inclusive companies and find companies willing to implement fully-supported pilot programs (every company that has implemented a well-structured pilot program has chosen to make the program permanent). In the next few weeks,we are going to start gathering survey information in baby-inclusive companies so that we have conclusive, quantitative data to combine with the tremendous anecdotal evidence of the success of babies-at-work programs for businesses and families. Every day, we will be updating our tally of baby-inclusive companies and babies hosted in the workplace.
We are moving forward on every front—building our network, creating a united coalition of baby-inclusive companies, gathering data, speaking at conferences about babies at work, setting up pilot programs. We are even looking into creating web-distributed videos showing babies-at-work programs in action, as well as how highly-responsive parenting (and other parenting knowledge) often leads to happy, mellow babies who thrive in workplace programs.
But we need your help. Here’s how you can get involved:
1. Join the PIWI Network. Whether you’ve taken a baby to work, work in a baby-inclusive company (or want to), or are simply supportive of our efforts to build a world in which families of all kinds are supported, we would love to hear your experiences and opinions. Joining is free, and you can choose to donate $30 if you wish to receive a PIWI mug and a seal for your website to show your support. We are also starting a PIWI Blog Network for advance notice of PIWI initiatives and opportunities to participate in blog carnivals and other events. If you wish to join the Blog Network, please enter your information when you join our Network.
2. The Bridge Project. Spread the word to current baby-inclusive companies that might be interested in joining The Bridge Project—the first wave of our plans to celebrate and expand babies in the workplace. Companies who join the Bridge Between Career and Family will have their baby program permanently featured on our website and will receive free initial baby-inclusive certification services, outreach avenues for sharing their products and services with Institute supporters, an outlet for finding skilled employees among PIWI supporters, and priority for being included in future media pieces.
3. PIWI’s Facebook Page. Join our Facebook community; we will be communicating frequently in the upcoming days with our supporters there as well as on PIWI Place, our private community for PIWI Supporters.
4. Expand our Baby-Inclusive Database. Tell us if you know of companies anywhere in the world that have allowed an employee to bring a baby to work (even informally) so that we can contact them. Share with us your suggestions of companies that might be willing to try setting up a formal babies-at-work pilot program.
5. Outreach. Write and talk about parenting in the workplace. Spread the word about our effort to bring parenting at work to the mainstream, and share your own experiences and thoughts about this concept. Let us know when you post your work and we’ll do our best to share your thoughts with our members.
We look forward to sharing this journey with you. Please contact us with any questions or suggestions you may have.
Carla Moquin
Founder and President
Parenting in the Workplace Institute