DadTalk

Trophy kids

Should kids and the workplace really ever mix?

Should footballers bring their kids on the pitch?

Wayne Rooney's lap of honour with his baby at Old Trafford on Sunday was very cute. I interpret it thusly: for a sportsman, it is a statement about the wraparound nature of the sporting life. "This isn't my job, this is the whole me, you know. Sinew, pulse, DNA, dynasty, destiny, the whole lot, I am sport, sport is me. I scarcely know where I begin and it ends."

It isn't unheard of for children to materialise at the end of a sporting challenge: the golfer Padraig Harrington, when he won the Open in 2007, was caught on a microphone being asked by his four-year-old son whether they could keep ladybirds in the trophy.

But should kids and the workplace really ever mix?

Opinion is mixed about children in offices. You definitely wouldn't want to see kids running around in a decision-making environment – an operating theatre, the Lib-Dem headquarters, the head office of BP. In offices where concentration isn't at a premium – banks, newspapers, councils, really all offices – it depends on what you make of work-life balance.

Read the rest of this article from the Guardian