Here’s another angle on the “kids at work” questions that have come up here recently. A reader writes:

I have a 14-month-old son. I returned to work from maternity leave in January after New Year’s when he was four months old. He is in daycare, and this week there was a breakout of hand, foot, and mouth disease in the kindergarten room. Even though he is in a different room, we didn’t want to risk him getting it so we decided to keep him home. I booked some time off, but there was one thing I wanted to get done and since my husband couldn’t get time off and our backups weren’t available due to vacations or illness, I brought our son to my office with me. (My husband works in a warehouse not suitable for children and neither of us have jobs where work can be done from home.)

I brought him in through the side door because I didn’t want to disturb or distract anyone who was already working, and I put a blanket and some quiet toys on the floor of my cube so he would be entertained while I worked. An hour later, my manager saw him when she walked by. She immediately said my son could not be there. When I told her I had no one else to watch him that day, she sent me home for the day and said we would discuss it when I got back from my time off.

After I got back, she called me into her office along with her boss and they and explained that our office is not a place for children. I mentioned that I didn’t have anyone to watch my son and was only going to be in for a few hours. They said it didn’t matter and I should have used time off and stayed home because none of our work involves hard deadlines and that while the company does things like offer more than is required by law for paid maternity leave and gives parents who submit receipts from licensed childcare a small stipend, it doesn’t mean that employees can bring children into the office. They said I would still be paid fully even though I left early that day and that they wouldn’t hold it against me this time, but it was not to happen again.

I am a bit taken aback by this. I understand that we can’t have children running amok, but my son was playing quietly to the point where my coworkers on either side of my cube didn’t know he was there and no one noticed until my manager walked by. Unlike the warehouse where my husband works, there is no machinery or chemicals; it’s a regular office and he was fine playing on my floor. It was my first time doing this and is not going to be a regular thing at all.

I asked about 10 of my coworkers about bringing a child to the office in case of emergency, and every single one (parent or not, younger or older than me) expressed horror at the thought and said no way should it happen ever, not even just for a parent to drop by so everyone can meet their baby. Am I really that out of touch with professional norms for not seeing this as a big deal? Is there anything I can do to convince my manager that this should not be a problem?

It’s a thing that varies by office. Some offices are totally fine with bringing a kid in for a few hours or even the whole day when your child care falls through. Some offices are not.

There’s certainly an argument that giving people some flexibility on this, within reasonable limits, is a good thing in offices that are able to accommodate it, as long as the person is being considerate of coworkers. But there are downsides for employers too — like that you can’t work at your normal level of productivity when you’re also watching a child, that kids can be loud and distracting to other people (even though yours wasn’t in this case), and that there can be safety or liability issues for the company if something goes wrong. It’s legitimate for companies to decide that they don’t want to take that stuff on.

It sounds like in your case, your employer is telling you that your work is not so urgent that you should feel you need to show up with a baby in tow. That’s not a bad thing. In fact, I’d argue that it’s far better than if they expected you never to let a child care emergency impact your work. It also sounds like they try to support working parents in other ways, like your company’s additional paid leave and childcare stipend.

You asked if there’s anything you can do to convince your manager to change her stance on this. In an office where the culture is so strongly “we don’t do this” — as evidenced by the reaction not only of your boss and her boss, but of the 10 coworkers you asked about it — I suspect the answer to that is no, at least not easily. If you really feel strongly about it and want to tackle it, your best bet is probably to enlist other parents in advocating for a policy change as a group. But I think it’s going to be a hard sell in that culture.

For what it’s worth, I do think your office is an outlier on their opposition to a parent dropping by to let coworkers meet a new baby — that tends to be a pretty common thing, even in offices where people wouldn’t bring a kid in for anything longer than that.

But I also think the degree of your surprise of all of this is an outlier too; a no-kids-at-work culture isn’t so terribly uncommon that it should be shocking to encounter it. So I suspect you and your coworkers are just on opposite ends of a pretty normal continuum of opinions on this stuff.