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> "Nannies make the world go round. Without them, half the workforce would be stuck at home" For my entry to Improbable Ideas day.... why don't we bring childr

> "Nannies make the world go round. Without them, half the workforce would be stuck at home" For my entry to Improbable Ideas day.... why don't we bring children to work? After they're no longer infants, its' plausible for children to simply run around the office, sitting quietly in the same rooms as their parents, and perhaps doing odd-jobs. It'd require a more holistic attitude to education than is presently allowed, but it is certainly possible to implement.

stonogo 9y ago
> sitting quietly ...what does this mean? Is this something that children can do?
- somethingsimple 9y ago
  Of course. Both my wife and I have taken our kid to our respective offices and it was fine. She just sat there drawing and playing on her tablet. This was when she was 6-7 years old. Not all kids are brats.
  - prawn 9y ago
    Not all kids are 6-7 years old. And I assume you're talking about occasional visits rather than a daily replacement for childcare or a nanny.
  - bigtunacan 9y ago
    And not all kids are content with sitting inactive, quietly, in a chair for 8+ hours. The fact that they are energetic, inquisitive, and have a need for attention from their parents does not make them "brats".
  - hueving 9y ago
    Are you drugging your children? What are you doing to suck the energy out of them that they can sit in an office for hours without recess to run?
- bryanrasmussen 9y ago
  yes, for minutes at a time!
richforrester 9y ago
Just a few reasons that come to mind: - They'd be yet another distraction - Who pays for the resources (space, nutrition, time) - What if you don't work in an office - Work environment might not be a great place for a kid
- lukeschlather 9y ago
  The typical work environment isn't a great place for parents either. Adding kids might be an opportunity to improve that.
taneq 9y ago
You've never tried to work around small children, have you? I work from home and let me tell you, if our nanny has a day off it's absolutely impossible for me to get anything done beyond a couple of emails if I'm lucky.
- abalashov 9y ago
  ... and the few e-mails I manage to send sound pretty ludicrous and ill-considered.
jredwards 9y ago
Not to be too pointed about it, but you don't have kids, do you?
prawn 9y ago
If I'm working from home, even if my 4yo has every toy in the house at his disposal, after a while he will inevitably come into the home office and spin around on the spare chair saying "Why do you have to wooooork so much? I need you to help me buuuuuiiiild something. Why can't you help me? I can't find (a particular piece of Lego). Why is Mama at wooooork? Why are you working?"
- mjevans 9y ago
  The child is asking a valuable question. Why all of this working? How can the work be explained, made interesting and relevant. Is there some way of involving the child that is educational rather than abusive? (Also, if a 5 year old can understand how to correctly use the UI for the application, why can't your client?)
  - wyattpeak 9y ago
    I think it'd be a valuable question if it were asked by someone sincerely interested in the answer, but at that age children are really just complaining. Could you involve the child? Maybe, but training someone for work is non-trivial. When I'm just starting to train someone, our collective output is usually less than mine working alone, and that's for someone with the requisite skills. How much work could reasonably be assigned to children in a way which isn't just a waste of time? How much are they really going to benefit from that?
    - prawn 9y ago
      Even some adult employees require non-trivial amounts of effort to keep them working, just so anyone in a role with oversight can actually try to get something done.
    - abalashov 9y ago
      I agree as regards four year-olds. That said, the usefulness of older children, even ~8-10, is frequently underestimated. There was a time when they made useful apprentices and assistants, though admittedly at crafts that were probably less abstract and specialised. Still, I started programming and using UNIX when I was 9. I imagine I was probably capable of some amount of useful output by 11-12, though it would have to be carefully directed by a pragmatic mentor with a view to bottom-line impact.
fiatjaf 9y ago
I agree with you. All people here are complaining with status quo bias in control of their minds. I think work can be much more interesting to a child than school or a nanny and the playground. Also, it would be so much cheaper to spare school/nanny costs that a lot of money could be spent to make the environment better for the child. We're talking about children older than 7 or so, right? I think children from 7 to 20 could be taken to work and actually learn much more.
- abalashov 9y ago
  All depends on how you raised the children before 7-10. They don't magically become a certain way at 7-10. ;-) I mean, to some extent they do. Kids are born with an amazing amount of cognitive bootstrapping and initrd. But by elementary school years, the difference between children who were reared in intellectually stimulating ways and ones who weren't become patently obvious and to a larger extent entrenched.
Kluny 9y ago
The thing is, for people with kids, at least half of their motivation for showing up to work is getting away from the kids for a couple hours. (Exaggerating, but still).
- kobeya 9y ago
  As someone with kids, I never understood why people say this. Oh what I'd give to spend every waking moment with them as they discover the world.
  - zxcmx 9y ago
    Not all parents, children and situations are made alike, I suppose. Personally I enjoy spending a portion of my day not interacting with humans, let alone my children. Some days I even enjoy my commute, because even though I'm on a busy line and we're all jammed into each others armpits, my mind is my own and nobody wants anything in particular from me.
knob 9y ago
You would probably enjoy the book "Iron John", as written by Robert Bly. Your entry for today in the Improbable Ideas forum, was how things happened in the past. Children would go to work with their parents, in the pre-Industrial Revolution era. Father was a blacksmith? Children would go with him, and sweep the floor, pump air into the furnaces, and organize things. As they matured (both in age and skills), their tasks would grow. Father's brother was a leather worker, so it was easy to send your kids to work with your brother, so they would see if they wanted to be blacksmiths or leather workers. The Industrial Revolution destroyed the father-son relationship. Fathers would leave the house at 6:00am, and come back at 8:00pm. Young boys would have a blackhole regarding what their fathers did during the day. This blackhole, Bly argues, would get filled with "demons". Not voodoo-demons, yet "demons" in the sense of a "lack of knowing what my dad does every day". In part, we as a society in the West have been suffering the effects of this destruction ever since. In the 80s and 90s, with the increase of mothers in the workforce, the same thing is now happening to the mother-daughter relationship. We have to wait a couple of generations to see what effect this has on women.

stonogo 9y ago

> sitting quietly ...what does this mean? Is this something that children can do?

somethingsimple 9y ago
Of course. Both my wife and I have taken our kid to our respective offices and it was fine. She just sat there drawing and playing on her tablet. This was when she was 6-7 years old. Not all kids are brats.
- prawn 9y ago
  Not all kids are 6-7 years old. And I assume you're talking about occasional visits rather than a daily replacement for childcare or a nanny.
- bigtunacan 9y ago
  And not all kids are content with sitting inactive, quietly, in a chair for 8+ hours. The fact that they are energetic, inquisitive, and have a need for attention from their parents does not make them "brats".
- hueving 9y ago
  Are you drugging your children? What are you doing to suck the energy out of them that they can sit in an office for hours without recess to run?
bryanrasmussen 9y ago
yes, for minutes at a time!

richforrester 9y ago

Just a few reasons that come to mind: - They'd be yet another distraction - Who pays for the resources (space, nutrition, time) - What if you don't work in an office - Work environment might not be a great place for a kid

lukeschlather 9y ago
The typical work environment isn't a great place for parents either. Adding kids might be an opportunity to improve that.

taneq 9y ago

You've never tried to work around small children, have you? I work from home and let me tell you, if our nanny has a day off it's absolutely impossible for me to get anything done beyond a couple of emails if I'm lucky.

abalashov 9y ago
... and the few e-mails I manage to send sound pretty ludicrous and ill-considered.

jredwards 9y ago

Not to be too pointed about it, but you don't have kids, do you?

prawn 9y ago

If I'm working from home, even if my 4yo has every toy in the house at his disposal, after a while he will inevitably come into the home office and spin around on the spare chair saying "Why do you have to wooooork so much? I need you to help me buuuuuiiiild something. Why can't you help me? I can't find (a particular piece of Lego). Why is Mama at wooooork? Why are you working?"

mjevans 9y ago
The child is asking a valuable question. Why all of this working? How can the work be explained, made interesting and relevant. Is there some way of involving the child that is educational rather than abusive? (Also, if a 5 year old can understand how to correctly use the UI for the application, why can't your client?)
- wyattpeak 9y ago
  I think it'd be a valuable question if it were asked by someone sincerely interested in the answer, but at that age children are really just complaining. Could you involve the child? Maybe, but training someone for work is non-trivial. When I'm just starting to train someone, our collective output is usually less than mine working alone, and that's for someone with the requisite skills. How much work could reasonably be assigned to children in a way which isn't just a waste of time? How much are they really going to benefit from that?
  - prawn 9y ago
    Even some adult employees require non-trivial amounts of effort to keep them working, just so anyone in a role with oversight can actually try to get something done.
  - abalashov 9y ago
    I agree as regards four year-olds. That said, the usefulness of older children, even ~8-10, is frequently underestimated. There was a time when they made useful apprentices and assistants, though admittedly at crafts that were probably less abstract and specialised. Still, I started programming and using UNIX when I was 9. I imagine I was probably capable of some amount of useful output by 11-12, though it would have to be carefully directed by a pragmatic mentor with a view to bottom-line impact.

fiatjaf 9y ago

I agree with you. All people here are complaining with status quo bias in control of their minds. I think work can be much more interesting to a child than school or a nanny and the playground. Also, it would be so much cheaper to spare school/nanny costs that a lot of money could be spent to make the environment better for the child. We're talking about children older than 7 or so, right? I think children from 7 to 20 could be taken to work and actually learn much more.

abalashov 9y ago
All depends on how you raised the children before 7-10. They don't magically become a certain way at 7-10. ;-) I mean, to some extent they do. Kids are born with an amazing amount of cognitive bootstrapping and initrd. But by elementary school years, the difference between children who were reared in intellectually stimulating ways and ones who weren't become patently obvious and to a larger extent entrenched.

Kluny 9y ago

The thing is, for people with kids, at least half of their motivation for showing up to work is getting away from the kids for a couple hours. (Exaggerating, but still).

kobeya 9y ago
As someone with kids, I never understood why people say this. Oh what I'd give to spend every waking moment with them as they discover the world.
- zxcmx 9y ago
  Not all parents, children and situations are made alike, I suppose. Personally I enjoy spending a portion of my day not interacting with humans, let alone my children. Some days I even enjoy my commute, because even though I'm on a busy line and we're all jammed into each others armpits, my mind is my own and nobody wants anything in particular from me.

knob 9y ago

You would probably enjoy the book "Iron John", as written by Robert Bly. Your entry for today in the Improbable Ideas forum, was how things happened in the past. Children would go to work with their parents, in the pre-Industrial Revolution era. Father was a blacksmith? Children would go with him, and sweep the floor, pump air into the furnaces, and organize things. As they matured (both in age and skills), their tasks would grow. Father's brother was a leather worker, so it was easy to send your kids to work with your brother, so they would see if they wanted to be blacksmiths or leather workers. The Industrial Revolution destroyed the father-son relationship. Fathers would leave the house at 6:00am, and come back at 8:00pm. Young boys would have a blackhole regarding what their fathers did during the day. This blackhole, Bly argues, would get filled with "demons". Not voodoo-demons, yet "demons" in the sense of a "lack of knowing what my dad does every day". In part, we as a society in the West have been suffering the effects of this destruction ever since. In the 80s and 90s, with the increase of mothers in the workforce, the same thing is now happening to the mother-daughter relationship. We have to wait a couple of generations to see what effect this has on women.