June 19th, 2013
I believe that events and places could do a better job of making changing stations readily available to both men and women that are with small children. I believe it now and I believed it ten years ago…but it was only a REALLY big deal to me for a few years. The years when I had babies and had to change diapers.
There were times when I was out running around with one or two little ones and desperately needed a decent place to change a diaper. When there is an actual changing table in a clean and spacious men’s room, it is a wonderful thing. But often there is not an actual changing table or even an actual clean (or spacious) men’s room. I have, more than once, laid my shirt or sweatshirt down on the floor in some cramped and dirty and smelly men’s room so that I could change a diaper without putting my child on one of those foul floors.
Changing tables rock. But mostly they rock for people that need to change diapers.
I do not really notice them anymore. It used to be top of mind, it even influenced where I would go when I had the kids with me and where I would not go. We are no longer diaper people, we have been completely out of diapers for a while now and I no longer notice whether the men’s room has a changing table or not any more.
How we experience things can be powerfully informed by who we are. Our identity, our experience, our expectations all play a big role in how we experience places and events and situations. As my identity has changed (young professional to not young professional, single to married, not having children to having children, having one child to having two children to having three children, etc.) what matters, what I notice, what I care about and how I experience things has changed.
When I had babies and needed to change diapers, access to changing table was a serious issue, it influenced my attention and my emotions. Even when I did not need to use a changing table I looked for them, I paid attention to where they were and where they were not. I still feel that changing tables should be readily available to parents, but I no longer pay attention. I am not thinking about it, not looking for it and there is no real emotion connected to the issue for me.
I have talked to a lot of people about race in Omaha. I have facilitated a lot of conversations about race in Omaha. I helped design, support and launch an event called Omaha Table Talk, which is a great opportunity for diverse groups of people that do not know each other to have dinner together in someone’s house and talk about race and ethnicity in Omaha.
The vast majority of white folks that I talk to about race in Omaha are confident that race is not a problem in Omaha. A great many People of Color that I talk to about race in Omaha feel that there is obvious and overwhelming evidence that Omaha has real issues related to race.
When I talk to male executives about gender in the workplace they are often quite confident that there is no real challenges related to gender in the workplace. I have talked to a great many female executives from the same organizations that have stories on top of stories related to gender and their work experience.
If we do not sit down together and share the stories of how we experience our community, our place of work, our house of worship, how can we lead, how can we be about solutions and the future? I cannot fully understand a social space until I understand how people different from me experience it.
Do you share these stories where you work, play, live, worship?
Be good to each other.
Oftentimes, the white gay men in my life cannot see racism when it’s happening right in front of their faces; they’re so wrapped up in the injustices associated with their sexual orientation that they see little else. When it’s pointed out to them, some get defensive and still want to make the case that gays are hated more than anyone, so … (somehow, they never get around to finishing that sentence). The metaphor I use to explain this is that it’s hard to feel the soothing massage that your left hand is receiving when your right hand is being stabbed with a rusty fork. What I still haven’t figured out is this: why is being the biggest victim such a coveted prize? The Oppression Olympics is the only game I know where you have to lose in order to win, and it baffles me that we still play it.
What a great viewpoint. I have never thought of things from that perspective (and I’m happy to have been out of the diaper stages for 13 years now). As leaders, I think we can seek to engage our teams in meaningful conversation about what each person is currently passionate about. Then keep asking, because once the diaper stage is over, we can seek out another passionate goal. It doesn’t have to be political in nature. We all have passion for certain aspects of our jobs. Encourage folks to work on things that feed that passion, and we can really boost productivity!
Amen. Sitting down to eat with one another is a great starting place for conversation and improved understanding, I love it. The word company comes from the Latin ‘to break bread with’ and is a powerful link for me in and out of the workplace. Poop or no poop – keep on keepin’ on.
[…] few days ago, I read a blog post by Joe Gerstandt. In it, he talked about how his need for diaper changing tables, when his children were small, […]