Is “bring your child to work”-day actually real like in television shows and what were some of your experiences?

25 comments

1. Yep. I remember going with my dad when I was a kid im the 80s.

   And my work has it every year, people always bring their kids. We’ll have 20-30 kids.

   It’s not universal by any means. But it’s not uncommon.

2. It’s real. I did it as a kid. I got to watch my dad preform a surgery via a camera in his OR.

   I didn’t spend all day with him but got to see his office, hang out with his nurses a bit, and got to hang out with his medical assistant.

   Not every parent does it but many do.

   Some jobs don’t really lend themselves to kids visiting. For that reason my school also included shadowing. Volunteers would step up to show different jobs. Like one year I went to a custom electronics manufacturing place where a classmate’s dad worked and one of his coworkers showed me around for a couple hours.

3. For office jobs it was at least. If I had kids, they wouldn’t be allowed inside the chemical plants I go to.

4. Yeah I went to work with my mom a bunch in the 90s. And she was an air traffic controller lmao. That holiday stopped being a thing at her work place after 9/11 though obviously.

   It was really fun though. My job was always [“ripping strips”](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_progress_strip) which is a pretty basic task usually given to trainees, and they’d always give me an earpiece so i could listen in on the radio. I got to tell John Travolta what altitude to climb to once haha. Sometimes if mom got too busy I’d get handed over to the guy in charge of monitoring the weather systems and that’s where I first saw Linux which became a lifelong thing for me. I’m not sure if they were just being nice because my mom was their boss but I remember them giving the real trainees shit because, “look, the boss’s 10 year old is running these strips better than you are dude”. Very happy memory of mine. An FAA radar center is an incredible place for a techy kid to get to see even once. They’re all super locked down since 9/11 though so I’ll probably never see the inside of one again honestly.

5. In the mid-80s, my Dad was a helicopter mechanic for a university hospital. On “bring your child to work day” I wasn’t allowed to turn any wrenches, but Dad did make up an excuse to take the chopper for a test flight, and the pilot was more than happy to conspire. Best day ever.

6. My mom took me to work with her a few times in the late 80s/early 90s. She was an administrator so lots of paperwork and phone calls and filing and I don’t think I’ve ever been so bored.

7. More so my son than my 2 daughters who weren’t into building things. He loved learning construction ideas and the freedom of working outside and for yourself. Of course lunch at Quatman’s Cafe (1/2 pound cheeseburger deluxe with fries and coke still just 8.50) or any one of the hundreds of Cincinnati neighborhood bars/cafes wasn’t a factor lol. By the end of his senior year in high school I had him and 3 friends for laborers. It was a fun summer, we built 2 full additions and a double decker deck with pergola and then took the boys for 5 full weeks out west before they started college. Painted Desert, Petrified Forest, Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam, Yosemite, Bryce Canyon with side trips(twice to Vegas, gotta rest up and eat good food)

8. I’ve never been to one, and nowhere my wife or I have worked has ever done it. I’ve always assumed it was a very niche thing that is used in media as a plot device.

9. Yeah it is real. My Dad is a meteorologist but does most of his work in his office, but I got to see his office and meet some of his colleagues. Also “Take your kid to work day” was a building wide thing so they had set up a few cool demos and activities to show all the kids during the day and it was very cool. Saw some cool things with liquid nitrogen (done by a professional) and they had a cool presentation in a room with projectors on all sides, etc.

   Since you would miss a day of school, I think (I can’t entirely remember, it has been a while since I was that young) we had to get our parents to sign a permission slip and notify our teachers, but that was no big deal.

10. I went every year in elementary school with my dad, who was a high school teacher. I remember his students loving it but that’s probably rose-colored glasses speaking!

11. I did it several times as a kid in the late 90’s and early 2000’s at my mother’s office jobs, so it’s definitely a real thing, but I also have worked several corporate jobs myself at this point and have not seen or heard of it at all. We work in two different industries, so I’m not sure if that’s the reason, but from my own perspective, it’s something that was a much bigger deal 15-20 years ago.

12. It’s real.

    My dad was a doctor, so I wasn’t allowed to accompany him for much. I mainly remember sitting in the surgeon’s lounge for hours at a time, eating snacks and watching TV.

13. In the pre-pandemic days Amazon did a huge take you kid to work thing with decorations and stuff that took over the entire neighborhood around their HQ in Seattle.

14. My mother took me to her office once. I recall playing with a stapler. Later, she was downsized. Her company later relocated to the World Trade Center, which was destroyed on September 11th.

15. I didn’t know anyone who did this or any work that did or does this. I thought it was just a tv thing.

16. I work at a university and they do a full day activity for this. The morning the kid is with the parent then after lunch they go to two different activities that focus on research or careers etc that the kid picks from— ie: police, engineering , design etc. my daughter loves it

17. It is real but my parents never did it.

18. I haven’t heard anything about it since I was a kid in the 80s and 90s, even though I was heavily involved at my kids’ elementary schools while they were there.

    I don’t recall ever participating, except that one time in 2014 where my employer accepted a 3 month notice period in which my kid came with me every day while I found and trained my replacement, which is totally different but showed me how little can actually get done with a kid present… I’m assuming corporate America’s ever increasing pressure on productivity is why it’s rare nowadays.

19. I never did this as a kid because my dad was a lineman and that’s just asking for disaster.

    Back in the before times, it was an event at work. Different departments planned activities, the cafeteria was kid friendly that day, and we had a snow cone truck come to the office. It was a loud but fun day.

20. It started off as bring your daughter to work day, to show girls what kind of jobs they can have other than stereotypical ones.

21. Yes it’s real and it was fun for me. Rode around in my dads USPS truck and saw all the people he delivered mail to make small talk with him. I handed some mail to people and they were nice. Then we went back around the evening and I helped sort some mail and ate pizza. Had a blast

22. It’s a bigger thing at bigger companies than smaller ones, but yes. I went to a few with my dad and we got tours of the facility, did group events like recording a radio commercial in an actual recording booth, and got to see how the things the company produced worked. And of course breakfast, lunch, and some more “fun” things for kids to do with their dads. The people organizing it seemed to genuinely put thought into it and it was a great time.

    One of the coolest things they did was spend a bit of time showing off and explaining what each division of the company did. My dad worked at the headquarters, so they had everything from C-level management, accounting, procurement, sales, HR, engineering, test facilities, etc. So as a 12 or 13 year old, I got exposed to a dozen different career paths I could potentially take if I wanted to. All from people actually working in those positions.

    My dad worked there for 30+ years. I ended up working there in 2 different jobs (procurement and the warehouse) for 3ish years. Other family members worked there as well. Wasn’t the greatest employer, but they did some of the little things right.

23. I never attended a bring your child to work day as a kid, and my office has never had children there either. I’m sure it’s a thing somewhere.

24. Yes – at some larger employers. I first knew it as ‘take your daughter to work day’. It was one day a year. The thinking was that, as children, girls were not presented with as many possible occupations as boys. It was a conscious effort to present an early introduction to career paths beyond nursing, secretarial/admin, etc.

    More here: https://time.com/4753128/take-your-our-daughters-to-work-day-history/

25. Very much so, used to go once a year to my dads work.