Would you take an infant to a professional conference?

[darcyam]

So there is a professional conference I am dying to go to.  It is right up my alley.  My dh, who is in the same profession, is going.  My dd is almost 3 mos old and I am nursing her exclusively.  I don't know if it is appropriate (or if it would even be allowed) to take an infant to a professional conference.  Would you do it?  Have you done it?  I'm not even sure it would be worth the effort it would take to pull it off (or be worth the money as it costs about $200 to go to the conference).  Right now I'm just feeling like being a mom, although so great and rewarding, means big sacrifices professionally :-(

[dawningmama]

I think it would depend on the profession. For the industry I'm in now, finance, no, I definitely would not take an infant to a conference. Is it possible you could each go for 1/2 of it or a couple of seminars and trade-off childcare?

[darcyam]

The field is psychology.  The conference is actually on the topic of attachment as it relates to therapy and spirituality.  Splitting it is a good idea but I bet they will make us both pay for it which would be a lot of money for each of us to only go to half.

[KLM99]

No, I wouldn't do it.  An infant at a conference would be distracting and unprofessional.  If you don't feel that you can be away from your 3mo for that long (and I certainly don't blame you!), then you might have to skip this one.  Can DH or a colleague give you copious notes?  Can you arrange for the materials to be given to you even if you don't attend?  Can you plan to go next year (if it's recurring)?

I think sometimes we are "told" as professional moms that we can excel at both parenting and working, but honestly sometimes you cannot make the best decision in both arenas at the same time.  Sometimes your child will be more important (and you might not be able to do what's absolutely best for you job) and sometimes your job will be more important (and you'll have to make that choice over what might be absolutely the best for your child).  It sounds like at this point with an EBF 3mo that you may have to make the best choice for your child at the risk of harming your professional life for a bit.  It's what makes being a working mom so difficult :(

[emilysmama]

The hard sciences seem to be fine with it, especially in professional conferences where a significant number of attendees are academics.

3 months old is the easiest time to do it because they don't do much more than sleep and breastfeed.  It's when they awake more, and when they start crawling and walking that I would advise against it. (But I have done that many times too.) In retrospect, I think I could have brought my dd to a conference at 3 months, but the idea didn't even occur to me until years later.  At 6 months, however, I started bringing dd to 30 minute - 1 hour long scientific talks and all kinds of very long meetings at work, and those worked out fine.

My dd has been regularly going to professional conferences since she was 3 years old, and now almost 7 years of age, she still loves them.  She has always gone to all the talks and enjoyed them. She is much better behaved than the adult attendees.  In fact, we are going to attend a physics conference tomorrow.

I think it will most likely be fine.  But there are a lot of factors to consider that you would never think about.

If your baby breastfeeds for long stretches of time (mine used to take 45 minutes per side), and then fall sleep dead to the world after breastfeeding, then it will be fine. 

Would your baby be startled awake by clapping at the end of a fifteen minute presentation? Some babies are, mine would have slept right through. Try it at home to see what happens so that you are not surprised.

Some conferences really pack the room with chairs and people, so that there are no aisles, and few empty chairs.  That makes it difficult, if not impossible, to sit in an aisle seat, next to the door and make a quick and silent exit if necessary.  I love conferences that are set up with generously wide aisles, and lots of room in the back of the room so that you can bouncy stand or pace back and forth with the baby in Ergo while listening to the talk. I personally would not give a presentation with the baby in tow.  I've heard of the rare mama who has done so, but I think I would hand off the baby to spouse while giving my talk.  I think that bringing baby to listen to the talk is fine, however.

If spouse is there to help then it would work fine, and be a thousand times easier than if it's just you and the baby there at the conference.

Yes, you will probably have to pay 2X$200 registration for both parents. But don't let that stop you.  That's not thinking about it the correct way. Even before baby, I didn't attend every single talk in the conference.  I only went to a tiny fraction of the talks. The rest of the time is supposed to be for networking, etc. (Can you register as a guest/spouse at a substantially smaller registration fee and still go to all the talks, etc?)

It really does depend on the discipline.  It also depends on if the conference is a national conference (which is what I think you are talking about), or a regional conference. For the regional conferences, I either talk on the phone with the person organizing the conference to give them the heads up, or I just show up and assume that everything will be all right.  For the national conferences, we have just been showing up without any warning. With only one exception (see humorous story below), everything did indeed go smoothly.

When dd was 3 years old, we took her to a physics conference (my field) and then a computer science conference (husband's field). Both times, everything was dandy.

Here is a humorous story.

When dd was 4 years old, dd said that she wanted to go to a conference and hear some talks, so we looked around and my husband decided to attend Linux World.  We had a bad feeling about it because the preregistration materials stated, in teeny-tiny print, "No one under the age of 18 admitted."  (None of the conferences we'd attended before, or since, had ever had a restriction like that.) We pre-registered me as a guest, and we pre-registered dd as a guest as well, anyway because it was free and because guests can attend the talks.  The conference was in this huge conference center in San Francisco.  My husband went in first thing in the morning.  I got there with dd later that morning.  In the lobby of the conference center, I went to the booth to pick up my registration materials.  Their procedure was to use a web cam to take a photo of the attendee, and immediately print out an entrance admission badge, with photo, for the conference.  The person at the booth even helped me print out dd's badge, and pointed us to a huge bank of escalators leading up to the conference.  At that point, I figured that I was in the clear.  But when I got to the escalator, I encountered a person who served as the bouncer and would not let dd enter the conference. (As my husband later recounted to friends, "She even had a badge and everything!"  My attempts to persuade him failed.  Since the conference was my husband's field, and not mine, I didn't push it hard.  Instead, dd and I went across the street where I consoled her by letting her ride the public carousel over and over and over again.

Since that time, dd has gone to many conferences entirely without incident.  In fact, 4 months after the above incident (still at age 4), she and I went to the AGU's national conference (geology, my husband's field) in the exact same conference center, and she loved it.  We didn't even have to register, we just showed up.  In fact, dd attended more talks than dh.  In fairness, that's because my husband was out in the hallway frantically grading final exams and preparing for his talk.

Edited by emilysmama - 1/13/11 at 11:40am

[Anna Phor]

I've done it, but I bring my husband to do childcare/be a tourist in the conference city. He has no interest in attending my professional talks. :) Also, my employer pays for my registration/hotel/travel costs.

[Peony]

I have but I work in lactation! Quiet young babies in arms have always been welcome at the professional conferences I attend. Once they start making more noise and being awake for longer periods then I have to bring someone with me to watch the baby. 

[namaste_mom]

I'm in the physical sciences and just took a 6 month old to a conference. I wore him and the had a mother's room when I needed to nurse. I stood up in the 15 minute talks and just stepped outside before the clapping began. During one session I laid him down in the corner of the room where I could still see the screen but he played on the floor (on a blanket). If he would not settle, I would just go look at the posters or meet with someone. I took the same baby at 6 weeks to a conference. He slept the whole time, even through the clapping. Most people did not seem to mind.

[lorijds]

Honestly, if you are questioning whether it's appropriate, please don't bring her.

I've been to conferences where it was okay (midwifery, lactation, that sort).   I've also been to conferences/classes where people brought their babies or kids, and despite being quiet for children, they were still children and it was terribly distracting and annoying.  

It was simply rude and disrespectful of the other participants, who paid hundreds of dollars to be there.  I'm thinking of one in particular...the mother beamed the entire time, and later I heard her telling a coworker that her daughter was so well behaved.  Whatever, I wanted to kill the mother by the end.  Her daughter *was* well behaved, for a 5 year old.  She also needed to get up and go to the bathroom more often than the breaks allowed, used a bright light to read by when the room was darkened for slide presentations, asked several questions of her mother regarding the slides (in a loud whisper), crunched on crackers and cheese and slurped her juice box, etc.  All perfectly normal things for a 5 year old to do, but very distracting for the rest of us.

[KLM99]

I posted earlier to say that I would not ever bring a child to a professional conference and am really quite shocked that this is common-place as indicated by others who have replied.  Maybe it is the industry?  I've been in finance and in HR and have never seen a single child at any of the many conferences I have gone to.  I agree with lorijds - even if you think your child is being perfectly well-behaved, there are considerable distractions that others will have to deal with (even if it's just because your baby's so darn cute and everyone wants to look at her instead of listen to the presenter!).  I just don't think it's appropriate.

[freestylemama]

It's really common in my discipline for nurslings to be at conferences.  Usually, fathers or partners hang out with them outside actual lecture rooms.  We've brought DD to my conferences and DH's.  No one has ever said anything negative and we're never the only families with kids at them.

That said, I would not bring the child into the actual room during a presentation (unless they were sleeping in a sling and you sat in the back and left immediately if there was even one noise). 

We're in a social science and hard science, for what it's worth.

[mamabutterfly]

I've gone to conferences w/dh there as childcare,  I go back to the hotel rooms for breaks etc. I had`other moms tell me they would've loved to do that. I missed some of the networking/schmoozing, but I didn't care.

I would try to inquire about you two sharing a registration, worth a shot. Explain the situation about wanting to take turns w/the baby.

good luck.

[KLM99]

Ok wait a minute - are we talking about bringing the child into the actual lecture room or just bringing your child and a sitter (be it DH or whoever) to the conference and then baby and the sitter hang around and wait for you to be done with the sessions?

[Ellien C]

I took DH and my 4 yo to a small professional meeting (about 150 attendees and I knew most of them - LOL.) DH and DD attended one or 2 dinners and a couple of breakfasts but not any of the actual meetings. We were the only family there. It was fine, but really a small group of people I knew. I also had my parents meet me in a city for another much larger conference. That was hard because there was literally stuff day and night. I ended up being (surprisingly) invited to some VIP parties and closed dinners - that I definitely didn't want to miss. So I had WAY less time with parents and kid than I thought I would. But they had a great time.

Depending on the conference it might be fine to take you kid, but if you feel like being a mom, then BE a mom. There will be more conferences. No need to rush into things within the first 3 months.

There's also a HUGE difference between a nursing baby and a 5 yo. I take my nursing baby to church all the time, but the 5 yo needs to go downstairs with the rest of the kids!

[EviesMom]

If the industry is fairly family-friendly, and the baby under 6 months old and if you're willing to step out at the slightest fuss, I think it would be fine. (Education it would generally be fine, IME. Finance probably not.) I've only done LLL and similar with my kids beyond infancy, and even those were hard with kid-distraction for sessions that didn't have childcare offered. A five year old, per a previous poster, is very different from a 3 month old.

[ecoteat]

 I've done it a couple times. DH and I were both attending and we took turns going to sessions. One time we did it MIL came too and watched dd while we were at sessions. Then we scheduled in a couple extra days to stay there so we could all enjoy the trip as a mini-family vacation since BIL and SIL lived nearby too.

[~pi]

I am in the sciences. I have definitely seen babes in arms at academic conferences. People bring them right into sessions, and they get whisked out of the room if they make the slightest peep.

I would call the organizing body (or, better yet, someone in your field who regularly attends the conference) and ask if others have ever brought a young baby. They may or may not have useful information.

Also, FYI, in my experience, $200 is cheap and you never attend all the talks anyway. I would be very surprised if they let you and your husband split a fee.

Good luck with the decision!

[LynnS6]

I've done it. I even asked them to find me a place to pump during the conference. Dh came and took care of ds while I was at the conference (he's not in my field). It worked fine.

I've worked in psych departments and would think that most would be OK as long as the baby doesn't disturb the sessions. Some conferences even have lower rates for unemployed/student members.

[darcyam]

Just to give an update: I decided to call the contact person for the conference and ask them if it would be okay to bring her.  They said that they could not see why it would be a problem as long as I take her out when she starts to fuss or if she gets really chatty.  I decided that it would be rude to just show up without asking.  We are going to take her and see how it goes.  Thanks for all your input!