RICHMOND, Va. — Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, more people are working from home and their young children are not attending daycare centers. That could create a difficult recipe for efficient working conditions, but a desk for working parents at a Virginia library is drawing rave reviews.
Ali Faruk, of Richmond, thought the idea was great and snapped a photo of the work station at the Fairfield Area Library, which he then posted on Twitter, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported.
The desk has a workstation for the parent with a play area attached to it for toddlers or babies, the newspaper reported. It has a vinyl cushion and built-in play features like a mirror and holes for playing games like peek-a-boo.
“I thought, ‘Wow, that is really amazing for working parents who can now keep an eye on their kids,’” Faruk told the Times-Dispatch.
Faruk was not the only impressed parent. His photo quickly went viral, drawing positive comments nationwide. He had more than 1,000 likes on his Twitter account within an hour.
“You can start businesses here. You can just produce,” Virginia resident Janelle Witcher who has two children ages 2 and 1, told WTVR-TV. “The library is great. Thank God for the library.”
“We’ve been seeing increasing numbers of parents coming in,” Shay Ramsey, the library’s supervisor of children’s public services, told the television station.
The combination work-and-play station had been at the library since the building opened in 2019, but it has drawn more attention now because of the pandemic. The four workstations are joined together in a cluster on the second floor of the library, the Times-Dispatch reported.
“Our library director, Barbara Weedman, had seen this issue throughout her career: caregivers of small children struggling to use a library computer,” Patty Conway, a spokesperson for the library, told the newspaper. “She’d see a mom balancing a young one on her knee while trying to fill out a job application or send emails and there is just no good way to do it.”
Shannon Wray, a Richmond-based designer, worked with Weedman to create the workstation.
“She said, ‘You know, if you could solve this problem, I think everyone across the country would want one of these,’” Wray told the Times-Dispatch. “They offer privacy, as well as an easy physical connection for the parent to attend to the child.”
Two years after their debut, the desks have become famous, partly because of the pandemic.
“I think what’s making them resonate with so many people is that we’ve all had to work from home for the past two years during the pandemic,” Wray told the newspaper. “So many of us have had to try and balance working from home with taking care of or educating our kids at the same time. I think that’s what made it so relatable to people right now.
“I heard so many people say, ‘Gosh, I wish I could have one of these for my house, it’s so hard to occupy my kids while trying to get work done.’”
Michigan-based TMC Furniture created the parent-and child-friendly workspace. The company launched the Fairfield Parent+Child Carrel, named after the Fairfield library, shortly after the workstation debuted in Virginia, the Times-Dispatch reported. It retails for $3,451.
“Raising children is so hard in America. There’s no universal child care or health care,” Faruk, who is the policy director of Families Forward Virginia, a nonprofit that aims to prevent child abuse, told the newspaper. “To see something that actually makes life easier for parents of babies, people are like, ‘Oh, it’s amazing!’”