It occurred to me that we might be doing motherhood wrong. Don't get me wrong; I love the freedom to work and not need a man to earn a wage for me, but I also don't want kids. This concept has been bubbling in the back of my head for some time after a fellow employee and new mother commented on it.
While there are some jobs that are not safe to have a child at; I do wonder why can't we have more kid friendly job sites? There is no reason to go back to the "man's work" or "woman's work," but I do wonder if and how it would change the way our society views kids, things, and work in general if we allowed at least nursing mothers to bring their kids to work. I totally get that a child is a lot of work and demands a lot of attention, but I have seen so many people who love to fuss over them as well.
Having kids at work would definitely change the atmosphere. How many sexual harassment suits would not happen, because we just don't say those things in front of kids? There will definitely be an up tick in the amount of "hold please" because the kid's wandered off; but is that such a bad thing? How many times have we wanted to place an emotional phone call on hold so that all involved could clear their head a bit?
Oh there would be a definite drop in productivity, but also significantly less stress to get to the day care to drop off or pick up the kid. How many kids would get left in the car with all your coworkers looking for them? How many kids would have a better idea of what good work ethic is? How many kids would better understand what it takes to get the latest iPhone?
But really I don't think kids in the work place are the answer. Realizing, honoring, and giving value to Child Rearing would be the better answer. There are many things that have "value added" status; why not Child Rearing? Why can't we assign and give some type of monetary value to being a stay at home mother? When women entered the work force the number of available workers doubled and started to drive down earnings (breaking the dollar from the gold standard did too, but that's another topic).
As a society we have yet to acknowledge that Child Rearing is important. We argue over the "right to life," what a family is made of, and the like, but not one conversation about the value of Child Rearing. It is obviously worth something as many work in the Child Rearing field and have assigned a value to watching a kid for you. If you have a kid and no job the government will pay you as well as demand the other person responsible for producing the kid pay. The very well off will hire a person(s) who's entire job is to be a parent to the child.
But we do not recognize the value added of Child Rearing in any other way.
