Moms Don’t Need Fun Job Perks. They Need Child Care.

“Want to work for a company like Facebook Inc., Apple Inc. or Google? You’re hardly alone. Many tech companies offer their employees nearly every perk imaginable, from free meals and booze to on-site doctor and dentist appointments, gyms and haircuts to massages and fitness classes. Everything, that is, except the service that would help moms most: on-site child care.

“Sure, you can bring your dog to work, but you are (mostly) on your own with your baby,” Bloomberg Technology anchor Emily Chang notes in her book “Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys’ Club of Silicon Valley.” “That’s because Silicon Valley companies have largely been created in the image of their mostly young, mostly male, mostly childless founders.” Their food-, entertainment- and service-filled campuses enable and even encourage staffers to spend most of their waking hours at work, which works well for people like the young singles who helped create many tech companies — but not for parents.

Yet Chang writes that many Silicon Valley firms offer other generous perks to help new moms and dads, such as paying for fertility services, generous family leave and the “pregnancy parking” found at Facebook. That’s what makes their lack of child-care options so glaring. Not only would offering on-site day care help parents, but it would also help tech companies recruit and retain top talent and improve productivity.”