Take Your Kid to Work Day!

Yesterday we celebrated a national holiday (sort of): Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day. How many of you moms and dads (or aunts/uncles/grandparents/friends) out there participated? If you took a picture of your kid at work yesterday, send it to us and we’ll post it!

Mentoring is great, and many of us have fond memories of going to mom’s or dad’s office or work site when we were kids. But truthfully, we do have one problem with the day, which was founded 18 years ago by the Ms. Foundation for Women as Take Our Daughters to Work Day (sons were added in 2003): The main sponsor right now is none other than Barbie!!

Yes, Barbie is supposedly the symbol of women’s career aspirations! True, Barbie has more than 120 careers on her resume, including astronaut, computer engineer and paleontologist–busy woman! But need we point out…. she’s a doll? And her feet are pre-shaped to wear high heels? Not sure if she’s the ultimate working-woman role model for daughters or sons.

Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day has become part of the culture, as evinced by The Office and here, The Onion:

If you have any stories about going to work with a parent, or participating in this annual event, please share them!

UPDATE: From Ms. Blog reader Susan Keightley, “Here is my daughter, aged 8, helping input nutrition information”:


Read more on jobs and economic issues from Ms. here

About

The late Michele Kort—a dedicated feminist—was the senior editor of Ms. magazine for 13 years. She died June 26, 2015, after a long battle with ovarian cancer. She worked for decades in field of journalism, covering sports, music, culture, art and feminist issues for publications like LA Weekly, The Advocate, Shape, Redbook, Los Angeles Times Magazine, Songwriter, InStyle, Living Fit, Fit Pregnancy, Vegetarian Times, Fitness, UCLA Magazine, Women's Sports and Fitness and more. She is the author of four books, including a biography of singer/songwriter Laura Nyro, Soul Picnic: The Music and Passion of Laura Nyro. Rest in power, Michele.