The Ultimate Poster Child for Family-Friendly Workplaces

I volunteered in my daughter's kindergarten classroom for an hour and a half this afternoon. I work mornings, and Grandma was able to take her little sister, so I jumped at the opportunity to get to know the place our daughter will spend so much of the next six years. I enjoyed helping the kids with their projects and soaking in their distinct personalities, which were so obvious even as they did the same task.

The most poignant moment was when a darling dark-haired boy blurted out, "I wish MY mom would come help in my classroom! I could see her, and say 'hi,' and show her around." I don't know this boy, or whether or not his mom works, or how her boss might have reacted to this earnest child.

I don't know if my response was politically correct, or potentially created false hopes, but if this were my capable, charming son, I would want to know this about him. So I looked him in the eye, smiled, and said, "Really? Maybe she can, sometime. Ask her, and see what she says." He pondered this as he went back to working diligently. I wonder if he told her over dinner tonight; hopefully she was already slotted for next week, and he didn't know it yet.

Economically, it seems to get harder and harder for parents to slip from work to spend time at school or work anything less than very long hours. Workplaces have gained from the skill sets of women and mothers, with great benefit to society. The flipside to this is that the caregivers who used to be more available to aging parents, aunties, and children are pressed for time to spend with their nuclear families, let alone widowed great-aunts. So many adult children of the elders at work live in the metro area, but often a one or two hour drive away, which may as well be four hours during most work weeks. It's scary to ask for an afternoon off in many competitive workplaces. I have heard the sadness and loss in the voices of their 80-something parents more often than I care to recall. They are often grateful to have neighborhood volunteers available for their medical appointments, but openly thrilled when family can take them instead.

It's a little intimidating to volunteer next to the regulars, the SAHMs of multiple students who know the ropes at my daughter's school. Some don't exactly welcome moms in work attire. But if I ever become complacent with knowing little about our daughter's school world, I need only think about her disarmingly honest, dashing classmate.