A baby in the House of Commons caused a big fuss last week, without uttering a peep.
Some confusion over policy led a Parliamentary page to ask NDP MP Sana Hassainia, who represents a Quebec riding, to remove her three-month-old baby from the House during a vote.
A baby in the House is not particularly newsworthy. Sheila Copps took her baby to the Hill with her and Cape Breton’s Michelle Dockrill held her baby while voting. (She was also the first person to breastfeed in Parliament.)
A member of the European Parliament took her newborn to work to a vote with her in 2010. Only the media seemed to notice; parliament proceeded with barely a glance at the sleeping infant.
Little Skander-Jack wasn’t in the House of Commons so his mother could make a point. He was there because an important work requirement came up when childcare was unavailable and she had to make do in a way that did not endanger the baby or disrupt her workplace.
It would have worked beautifully, if other MPs hadn’t started a photo-snapping frenzy.
While Internet commenters have suggested Hassainia must choose between being with her baby and doing her job well, that is an artificial choice.
There is no cookie-cutter solution for balancing the demands of work and family and every family has to juggle life to make it work. Sometimes combining work and family is the only way to get the jobs done.
Members of Parliament are some of the many Canadians who don’t benefit from parental leave policies. Difficult choices have to be made in order to allow MPs to balance family and constituents.
From media reports, it seems Hassainia and her family found a creative, workable solution for the problem of no parental leave for the job, a very young infant and a demanding and unpredictable work schedule – Skander-Jack’s other parent cared for him while Hassainia was busy with work.
Last week, she was called to a vote and her husband had stepped away for a moment and she was faced with missing the vote and standing in the lobby with her baby or taking her seat with babe in tow.
As columnist Lila Hope-Simpson noted last week, infant care is hard to find and parents of children under 18 months of age need to find creative solutions. It is even more difficult to find childcare for three-month-olds like little Skander-Jack.
Even the most carefully planned childcare arrangement crumbles at times. Children get sick, daycare providers get sick, there are daycare strikes, snowstorms, hurricanes, etc.
Employers are catching on to the needs of employees with children. For instance, BMO Canada just announced it has made arrangements with a daycare company to provide employees with 10 emergency days of back up childcare a year, for just such a reason.
It isn’t always appropriate to mix paid work and parenting – certainly even a babe-in-arms wouldn’t be welcome on an assembly line – but pretending there is a firewall between the two is a delusion. As the number of skilled workers decline along with fertility rates, Canadian society will need to continue adapt to balancing work and childcare in creative ways.
When it comes down it, no infant disrupted the Canadian House of Commons last week, it was silly behaviour on the part of a few MPs.
How different is that than any other day Parliament is in session?
