What would you do if a university student wanted to bring her newborn to class?

[camaleon]

That is really. I have to make a decision regarding this. I need advice. I want to accommodate this student as much as possible but I am very aware of disrupting other students' learning experience.
What would you do?

holiday - Nurseries wont take newborns so that would be pointless.

Seriously - what kind of uni did you guys go to where 'movement fussing and noise' in a lecture is a noteworthy event....? Is the norm that everyone sits like statues for the entire time? A baby latching on makes less noise that a scratchy pencil or a folder opening. I think this is outrage in principle, rather than in response to actual or likely disruption.

I would say it depends on the baby. No way could I have taken my high needs screamer for example. I gather most babies sleep a lot though.
I waited until ds started school last year, sometimes take him up to the library if I need to pick up books, with a prior 'no talking' warning.

Students sucking on bottles of water like a giant boob are far more off putting than an newborn sucking on a real one.

I've taken a newborn to talks and presentations - they're virtually invisible if in a sling and asleep.

I would have been delighted to see a baby in any uni presentations I did, if I'd actually noticed them. Actually, maybe there was, I can't be sure there wasn't

My lectures were silent. I remember getting insanely pissed off with typers, people taking jackets off, pencils, you name it

A newborn needs its mother as much as a mother needs to know her newborn is fine.

Maybe the question should be why does a mother of a newborn NEED to go to university? Why isn't a woman allowed time off to recuperate and heal from giving birth and get used to taking care of a tiny human without dealing with the pressure of university too?

You'd be fuming now then - last time I sat in on a lecture about half of them were writing notes on laptops!

I hear what you're saying - but there are pressures on everyone that stretch beyond maternity leave. I think it is much easier to take a break when your qualification is in the bag - gaps are very risky - there is the emotional side - and also the university might change the course structure so that you need to jump through complicated extra hoops to finish.

Maybe she just wants to get on with it and finish her degree without taking time out?

I've never been in a silent lecture either - people coughing, shifting in their seats, typing/writing, turning pages, asking questions.

Oh god, probably. And in the library! I am twitching just thinking about it!

I really do think that there are ways to reduce the problems caused by a gap. Obviously, I am basing this on my own hugely stressful final year and completely non-silent baby but I don't think saying 'yes! bring all your babies to lectures!' is really the improvement it looks like, iykwim.

Babies were silent in the lesson the mums just stuck them on the boob, or left them in the car seat.

My wonderful PhD supervisor allowed me to take my son with me to a few of our meetings. I know it is slightly different as we were the only two involved, but I have always been so grateful to her for being accommodating.

OP, it is wonderful that you are willing to try and help the student achieve her potential. I now teach undergrads and would have no problem if one of them needed to bring a baby in, providing the lecture/seminar could still go on as planned.

I also took my newborn to a couple of lectures and to a dissertation meeting. It was the diefrtence between finishing my degree to provide a better life for my family or not. My supervisor wrote me an excellent reference complementing my ability to meet deadlines whilst taking care of a newborn.

I also took my DD to meetings with my postgrad supervisor when she was a bit older. She happily doodled pictures and we got on with it.

I'm grateful for the flexibility I was afforded and would encourage the OP to see how it goes.

How many lectures are we talking about here?

I used to wheel my friend's baby around campus while she was in her lecture - lucky timetabling meant I didn't have anything scheduled at that particular time. Rest of the time the baby was with his dad.

I would be fine with it as a one off but not as a regular occurrence (especially if H&S would have something to say about it, you might land yourself in hot water!)

New borns are pretty silent and when it's breastfeeding it will be quiet too. There are so few lectures these days it seems fair to let it in and given the amount of noise your average 18 year old youth makes I would think the baby would be very silent by comparison, no talking to it's friends, giggling, messing around. However once it got to a few months old 6 may be? it might start to get impracticable.

What zzzzz said

Hope it works out for this mum either way OP, you sound fantastically supportive x

I was a child development major at my junior college. As it goes, most students were female, and a large percentage had small children. We had a strict no children allowed in class policy. Campus had a nursery, but it didn't have enough space to accommodate everyone.

I understood the policy, because in this case, if children were allowed, they easily may have outnumbered the students.

This scenario is different. One newborn is not disruptive, as long as she agrees to walk out if baby cries, especially for how short a time is left in term.

I often wish my college's policy had accommodated newborns. Many women had babies in the middle of term, and so often they came back to class heartbroken and stressed a week after giving birth as they weren't ready to leave their newborns yet. The only problem I could see would be that all of us nursery teachers and development experts would have gone mad fussing and cooing over the newborn. But we're all adults, we would have settled when it was time to focus on class.

I once had a student ask if she could bring her 3mo baby to a tutorial as she had no child care that afternoon (she came back to uni and her husband stayed at home with the kids, but he couldn't look after them that day)- I said it was fine and planned to have a few minutes at the start so we could all coo over the baby before getting started on the tutorial, in the end she got childcare sorted out so no baby in class, I was disappointed

We wouldn't have been able to let her bring the baby to all the classes though- lectures and tutorials wouldn't have been a problem as far as I'm concerned but it's a medical school so not in most clinical skills/ward sessions. I did take DS to work a couple of times when my husband was ill and I didn't have childcare- asked my boss if he'd rather I took the afternoon off or came in with the baby and he said he didn't mind so I took DS (8mo at the time) in the sling and showed him to the patients. It was an old age psych ward and he cheered up most of the patients better than the tablets I prescribed! Couldn't have done that in other jobs though, can't carry a baby around in A+E...

I've taken my daughter to uni with me a few times when my childminder has cancelled at the last minute, 4 or 5 times for a full day 10-4 and have never had any trouble with her or the tutors. Other students either ignored her or played with her. The only time when she has caused a distraction was in the middle of a lecture on council housing stock when she loudly announced that she had to poop, and she had to do it now. Tutors are always very happy to see her too.

If it is not too intrusive, the. I think you need to find out mre about her childcare plans. Bringing a baby to a class occasionally (for example when childcare breaks down) shouldn't be a problem.

But she is there to learn, and she cannot do that effectively if soothing a cranky baby. And even when tiny you cannot rely on babies being calm and sleepy, especially if poorly or just had jabs or are early teethers or atny of the other random things that can throw them completely off kilter for a while.

She needs, really needs, some sort of childcare. For contact hours and for some study time.

Now, even if the reality hadn't fully dawned on her during pg but she surely must have considered childcare at some point. What options does she have? What will she do if there does turn out to be some sort of institutional policy that bars children (and a complaint is made)?

Now, it can be difficult to arrange and expensive. But it's an area you might be able to help her with, or at least signpost to the people with pastoral responsibilities.

And work out what happens to keep her on track should she be unable to attend, or is frequently having to leave early (this might be the single thing that makes the biggest difference to whether she completes the course and gets an adequate result).

I wasn't remotely suggesting she would be "lobotomised"

Simply that if your attention is divided, there is less of it for each responsibility.

There's a time and a place for most things. Taking babies into lessons isn't one. It's selfish. And it's people advocating this as the norm that gets feminism a bad name.

Sorry - people advocating things like this as the norm