NEW YORK (AP) — At Michigan State University, children of employees can spend Thursday seeing what it’s like to work on a dairy farm, play sports or plant a tree on the first Take Our Kids to Work Day at school person since the pandemic. began.
Some 1,500 staff and children have signed up, and the university has invited staff to bring any child in their life to explore campus.
“This is a way for people to see each other and meet their families, to show off MSU, which is designated as a family university,” said Jaimie Hutchison, director of the university’s Office of WorkLife. “It also allows people to see what others are doing on campus and feel more proud of the institution they work for.”
MSU’s plans recall the roots of Take Our Kids to Work Day, which celebrates its 30th anniversary Thursday. This year, the Take Our Daughters And Sons To Work Foundation, the nonprofit organization promoting the day, hopes more organizations will remind people of the importance of showing children where their parents work. The foundation also hopes to receive some help to ensure its survival.
The idea of Take Our Kids to Work Day, which the foundation celebrates annually on the third Thursday in April, seemed part of a bygone era in recent years because, due to the pandemic, there weren’t many workplaces to take them. .
Many parents always took their children to work, or took their work wherever the children were, at the dawn of the work-from-home era caused by COVID-19. And for parents who needed to go to a workplace, precautions to limit the spread of the disease usually kept their children away.
The foundation has had its own challenges. It was led for years by Carolyn McKecuen, a businesswoman, artist and MacArthur Fellow, whom Dave Oliveria, the foundation’s interim executive director, called the lynchpin of the organization. She died in November.
“The board is trying to pick up the pieces to keep it going,” Oliveria said. The foundation lost money last year and currently has no employees.
This year, it will partner with Junior Achievement USA to host a virtual event that will include a game show format where panelists will answer questions about their careers.
In the coastal city of Brigantine, New Jersey, School Superintendent Glenn Robbins encourages his staff to drive their children to school and students to walk their parents to their workplaces on Thursday. He estimates that about 30% of the students will participate.
“It makes them appreciate things that they might not see when they’re stuck in a school building every day for five days a week,” he said.
Over the years, educators and schools have complained that removing some students from class is more disruptive than helpful.
Thirty years ago, the director of the Ms. Foundation for Women, Marie Wilson, was inspired by research on the decline in girls’ self-esteem as they reached adolescence to suggest that parents take their daughters to work to expand their sense of of possibility.
The foundation’s co-founder, Gloria Steinem, mentioned the idea in an interview, and in the spring of 1993, Take Our Daughters to Work Day became a reality.
“It challenged the workplace to respond to the needs of the family in some way, including making people realize that many people had children at home,” said Teresa Younger, president and CEO of the Ms. Foundation for Women. .
Women’s labor force participation has remained nearly flat since 2000, after picking up in the 1990s. About three-quarters of women ages 25 to 54, a group that excludes students and retired, they were in the workforce in 1993, a number that has reached nearly 78% this year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The pandemic disproportionately pushed women out of the workforce and they returned more slowly even after lockdown measures ended and available jobs increased again.
The name and date of the day have changed since it began, including officially children in 2003, although many workplaces have used “child” or “child” for years. Additionally, companies and workplaces are free to host a day for employees to bring their children to work whenever and however they want, Oliveria said.
About 1,000 kids have registered for this year’s live stream, Junior Achievement US said. But it’s always been difficult to gauge participation, Oliveria said, but this year’s participation likely represents a sharp decline from the 18 million children the organization said participated between 2005 and 2009.
“I don’t see evidence of a million people, but I think a lot of companies can do their thing and we wouldn’t know it,” Oliveria said. “That’s kind of hard to embrace.”
Younger said that he understands the difficulty of continuing to meet the needs of the current moment.
“That is the challenge of every legacy organization, is: how do we respond to the challenges of now and continue to integrate the work as it should be?” she asked.
Taking a child to work remains a significant way to create a more economically and socially equitable society, he said. “It holds the industry accountable for the opportunities they provide to the next generation and the exposure they provide.”
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