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INNOVATION
& DESIGN Home Page Architecture Brand Equity Auto Design Game Room SMALLBIZ Smart Answers Success Stories Today's Tip INVESTING Investing: Europe Annual Reports BW 50 S&P Picks & Pans Stock Screeners Free S&P Stock Report SCOREBOARDS Hot Growth 100 Mutual Funds Info Tech 100 S&P 500 B-SCHOOLS Undergrad Programs MBA Blogs MBA Profiles MBA Rankings Who's Hiring Grads | | OCTOBER 18, 2000 WORK & FAMILY By Jill Hamburg Coplan It Takes a Collective... One graphic-design team's creative solution to the problem of making a living while raising a child
Art director Suzanne Rubinstein, 29, and animator Abby Klotz, 32, met as fellow art students in Colorado. By chance, they moved to the same Brooklyn (N.Y.) neighborhood. Though neither had children when they met again, they wouldd joke about starting a design firm where cribs would fit between the computers. Then last year, both women got pregnant at the same time and suddenly, the idea was no joke. At several meetings, they planned how to make it happen, beginning with drumming up work from everyone they knew. But they only later got up the guts to quit their jobs. After the babies arrived, they returned briefly to work -- and found themselves exhausted, unhappy, and living on take-out food. Like the 15% of Family & Medical Leave-takers who ultimately don't resume their jobs, they decided they couldn't stay on. SHARE CARE. And so The Design Collective was born. They began designing Web sites for nonprofits and art galleries and handling identity and logo jobs for small companies (currently, an outdoor-adventure company). Klotz takes the lead on Web projects, and Rubinstein directs when it's print ("No one constantly bears the brunt," Rubinstein says). They have no office or permanent staff, split everything 50-50, and, as needed, hire out to a local Web programmer, two graphic designers, and a music composer for interactive projects. None of that is particularly unusual. What is unusual is that they share child care, too -- and invite their subcontractors to join the arrangement. It works like this: The team on the current project meets once a day, with babies and toddlers, from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., at someone's home, a child-friendly neighborhood coffee house, or one of the playgrounds in Brooklyn's Prospect Park. "My laptop is key," Rubinstein says. "It gives us the freedom to move around, to be with the babies, and to work in places where they can run around." They launch new projects at a weekend brunch, babies included. On certain days, the designers share a nanny. Other days, a spouse does the child care. The rest of the time, they take turns keeping an eye on each other's kids while work gets done. "Then we go home," Rubinstein says, "and when the babies are sleeping, we work alone." FIRST STEPS. They're not against quality day care, which the preponderance of studies show fosters kids' development. These moms are just more comfortable with a more old-fashioned women's work style. It's similar to how Carole King composed Tapestry: diapering with one hand and writing songs with the other. Call it "on-site child care" with no dividing wall. It appears many parents work better with their children nearby. The American Business Collaboration for Quality Dependent Care, a group of 21 major corporations, spent $125 million over eight years building 1,000 on-site child-care centers. Recently, it found that more than two-thirds of employees who used the facilities were more productive and less stressed-out. The Design Collective moms do pay a price: Their attention is divided, they earn less than they could, and they must cram their solitary creative work into naptimes. But they say they still have it made. "I'm able to cook healthy meals for us, go to the park with Leah every day, and take late afternoon naps with her," Rubinstein says. And this week, when her 9-month-old stood up for the first time, she was right there to see it.  Jill Hamburg Coplan has covered work, family, business, and finance for the past decade as a writer and editor for newspapers, magazines, and wire services. She left Working Woman magazine, where she was senior editor, when her first child was born and now works solo from a home office in Brooklyn, N.Y. You can e-mail her at Jill Hamburg Coplan  | | |
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