I just don’t get why this matters. She took the kid out.

Well, for the record, I’m childfree and intend to remain that way. But good try.

I don’t think anyone is arguing that children belong everywhere. Your hyperbolic statements aren’t helping us to resolve this.

Just because they’re functioning on a language level doesn’t mean they’re fully formed on a reason level, haha.

“The ones at fault are the ones who have abused the office system and put everyone else on guard.”

None of this holds water. I will accept that there are some work places that are inappropriate for kids - you probably shoudn’t have a toddler running around in the industrial kitchen where you prepare food. That’s fair. But if there’s no paper shredder? If your child is small enough that they stay to a confined area?…

People worried about distractions make fair-ish points, in this thread, at times... but are so hesitant to recognize that they don’t apply that same level of criticism across the board.

Thank you for this further clarification! I sure didn’t know how math worked before, so I appreciate this. Certainly, it’s all cleared up now.

Have you ever seen someone shoot eye daggers at mothers for deigning to bring their child someplace at all? I sure have. Just because someone mentioned that the baby made a noise doesn’t mean that the situation was unreasonable.

So, because one woman somewhere can’t bring her kid to work, we should deny the women in my office the option of bringing their kids to work, even though they’ve been doing it for ages, with no consequences? I’ll walk down my hallway, and tell Maggie to get the kids out, because it’s not fair to Target Lady that…

There are SO many things in my office that are either distracting, or, if you think about it, have the potential to be distracting (as a child at work would be). I’m not bent out of shape about the CEO having an electric guitar in his office, just because he COULD play it loudly which would honestly be terrible. I’m…

It’s so obnoxious that cell phones going off is something we’ve come to accept, but a baby murmurs for a few moments before the mother can take him out, and everyone shoots eye daggers at her.

I’m sorry that you find the presence of children so burdensome?

Gee, thanks for explaining how it is! This clears everything up. See, before your comment, I just didn’t have any idea why anyone gave the author a hard time in the first place! THANK YOU.

Well, if one person lied about it once, then everyone else must be lying about it, too. Right?

And why wouldn’t it be? I haven’t seen the comment that suggests this involves making the coworkers endure hours of screaming and fussing.

I don’t think anyone has suggested that we should all just suck it up and cope when our post-feminist workplaces are full of screaming infants... has anyone here suggested that?

I think she arranged for a perfectly reasonable childcare solution. The kid wasn’t screaming, and she had a plan in place in case the child became fussy. What makes this not “appropriate”? Is it anything more than just old assumptions?

Aaaaand if this kid threw a fit, she had a plan in place to remove her from the auditorium. So I guess I’m at a loss for what you’re trying to say here.