During the height of the dot-com era here in the San Francisco Bay Area, many companies used to allow employees to bring their babies to work as a way to retain them. Once the local economy collapsed, many employers stripped the stock options and other perks, including this one, from their budgets.

Most recently, blogger Carla Moquin over at MomsRising raised the issue, saying that company productivity would increase if workers were allowed to bring their babies to work.

The impact on the work environment has been profound in these companies with structured baby programs. Babies improved morale--not just for the parents, who were obviously deeply grateful for the opportunity to keep their children with them--but for the office in general. Higher morale meant happier, more loyal, and often more productive employees. People started talking about their personal lives more and developed closer relationships with their coworkers, which led to increased cooperation and teamwork. In many companies, managers noticed that people were actually nicer to each other as a result of the babies being around. People--including many who really didn't want the baby program in the first place--discovered that a smile or hug from a baby was deeply rejuvenating if they were having a bad day, and they talked about needing their daily "baby fix..."

Babies-at-work programs obviously have many benefits for parents and babies, including easier breastfeeding, deeper bonding, lower day care costs, better financial stability, and increased social and intellectual stimulation for new mothers and babies. A "side effect" of babies in the workplace that could truly transform our society, though, is how regular interaction with babies (which was actually the "norm" in human history prior to the Industrial Revolution) rekindles awareness of our humanity in the workplace. It is likely that many more organizations will adopt baby programs, given the proven success of these programs in a wide range of companies, the extensive benefits of these programs, and the nominal financial costs for a business.

Don't get me wrong, I am all for family-friendly practices in the workforce. But, initially, I had a lot of questions about this arrangement. A new parent should be home resting and bonding with the baby, not stretching herself thin, commuting, trying to get work done AND caring for the baby. Why can't these companies let the parents take paid family leave? Or, let them work from home so that the baby can nap in its familiar surroundings?

Then again, it depends on what one does for a living. Not everyone has a job, in which working from home is possible. Take, for example, someone in retail or a waitress. As one of the posters mentioned in Moquin's piece, she works around heavy machinery and it would be unsafe to bring her baby to work. She wanted to know what MomsRising could do to make industrial jobs more family-friendly.

But the responses to Moquin's piece were overwhelmingly in favor of the arrangement. Dozens of moms piped up how it had worked for them with the caveat that is can be challenging, too.