Taking care of a newborn child is a “full-time job,” said a women’s health professional.
“Coupling that with returning to work could be really difficult for some people to do,” said Usha Ranji, associate director of KFF’s Women’s Health Policy Program. “Getting work done while you’re caring for anything is difficult.”
Indiana Gov. Mike Braun, on Tuesday, announced a “Family First Workplace” policy that would allow some state employees to bring their infants to work until they are six months old.
The program will start in the governor’s office, Indiana Department of Health and the State Personnel Department, according to a Tuesday news release, and state government officials believe it can generate higher morale, increase job satisfaction and motivate higher productivity.
Kirollos Barsoum, spokesperson for the state personnel department, said the state government doesn’t operate a child care or nursery program, and the pilot doesn’t create new work-from-home programs.
“The policy was developed to give State of Indiana agencies a structured way to support new parents during the earliest months of their child’s life without compromising workplace productivity,” Barsoum said in a Friday email. “The pilot includes three agencies … and aims to ease employees’ transition back to work, keep experienced staff engaged, reduce turnover, and reflect practices that have been effective in other states looking to strengthen family-supportive workplaces.”
Infants can be any child, biological or adoptive, according to the program policy, and eligible employees must be full-time and employed by the state at the time of the child’s birth. A coworker must also be an alternative care provider who can care for the infant for up to one hour each workday if a parent cannot.
“Indiana is going to lead the nation in pro-family policy,” Braun said in a Tuesday news release. “The parental bonding that happens in the first months of life are irreplaceable, and our new Family First Workplace pilot program helps parents stay connected to their newborns while continuing their careers. Indiana is building a culture that puts families first.”
According to the Economic Policy Institute, the annual cost of child care in Indiana is $14,471, or $1,206 per month. Indiana is also one of 38 states, including Washington, D.C., where the cost of child care is more expensive than college.
Infant care costs are also 11.7% higher than the average rent, according to the Economic Policy Institute, and care for one child would take up about 16% of a median family income.
In Indiana, about 10.3% of families can afford child care, according to the organization.
Ranji hasn’t seen other states create a policy allowing infants in the workplace, she said. Through KFF’s research, Ranji has found that child care is the leading service that women find the most difficult to get.
“The policy sounds like it might be helping some people for a very limited time, but obviously, child care needs to go well beyond six months or even the first year of life,” Ranji said.
Affordability, availability, and quality make child care more difficult for families to get, she said. For working parents, child care must extend until children go to school, and even then, they might have to get after school help as well.
In addition to child care concerns, Ranji said pro-family policies also include paid parental leave.
“I think, for more than 30 years now, the Family Medical Leave Act has guaranteed unpaid leave to many new parents,” Ranji said. “But, very relatively few people still have access to paid leave, which is really important for families who are taking care of a new family member and require child care.”
In March, Braun signed an executive order that would allow all full-time state employees to receive up to 150 hours of paid new parent leave, and part-time employees can receive up to 75 hours of paid leave. All employees are eligible for up to six weeks paid leave post-childbirth, and those who delivered through a cesarean section, according to the executive order.
“Parents are really part of the major engine that runs the state government,” Ranji said. “Policies that support parents being able to stay in the workplace and do their jobs really help make the state government run.”
Michael Hicks, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at Ball State University, said he doesn’t have an objection to parents to the workplace for about six months, but he questions how productive it would be with an infant.
Indiana’s population growth hovers near zero, Hicks said, and he believes it will continue for several years before it drops into negative numbers.
“Having policies that make it easier for families to form, have children, stay here and participate in the labor force are part of the integral health of our economy and healthy for families as well,” Hicks said.
Child care subsidies were defunded earlier this year, Hicks said, which were available for households with a total yearly income of $56,000 or less. This was directed towards younger families and would make child care affordable statewide.
The program opened up child care facilities that might not have been open otherwise, Hicks said.
“The ending of that meant that we’re seeing a wave of closures of child care facilities,” he said. “I think maybe as many as one in four in Indiana will close some time in 2026, and prices for child care are going up across the state.”
Ending remote work for state workers is another policy that Hicks considers to be anti-family, he said, adding that remote work is popular among college graduates and remote workers were more productive than those in-person.
“I think what the governor has done is introduce one very modest workplace policy that might help a few dozen families each year, while eliminating policies that affect hundreds of thousands each year,” Hicks said.
Hicks doesn’t believe that the family workplace policy by itself would push women out of the workplace, but reducing child care and eliminating remote work will.
Although the policies themselves are not large, Hicks believes that when combined, they create a state government that’s not family-friendly and will make young parents leave the workforce.
“In the long run, over a decade, the anti-family policies of the Braun administration are going to slow economic growth,” he said. “They’re going to make it more difficult for businesses to have access to the workforce that they need, and I think most importantly, it’s going to cause families to leave and not return.”