At Computer Associates, You Don’t Have To Miss Your Kids

It's a simple enough premise: Drive the kids to day care, tell them to have a fun day, get in the car and get yourself to work. But,if you actually have children,you know the mornings are never that simple: Daughter won't get dressed and Junior wants to go to work with you. Some days, getting out the door is like breaking out of Attica.

"Until you hold that child in your arms, all your concepts of childcare [are theoretical]," says Ira Simon, vice president of channel marketing at Computer Associates, Islandia, N.Y. "It's very hard to put your arms around it until you have a child."

But Simon is lucky: His employer has on-site day care for its employees. The center is state-of-the-art and Montessori-based; there is a curriculum, and teachers are specially trained and certified. Even with a ratio of two children to one caregiver, there's never a waiting list, so when Simon's former employer, Cheyenne, was bought by CA, Simon was able to get his two children right into the program.

Stephanie Goldberg, CA's channel marketing manager, also has two children at the center. She and Dori White, VP of global information administrative services, whose twin girls also attend, enjoy the security that having on-site day care brings.

"If she has a fever, I'm right there to take her home,"

Goldberg says. "Or if she just seems too cranky to participate in activities, they give me a call. One time, my daughter wanted me to come down for a snack. I couldn't take time out for a long break, but I asked her if I could come down and give her a hug. It was a disaster-averter."

Goldberg and White also plan "McDonald's picnics": Parents run out to pick up the fast food, and then everyone chows down in one of the center's common areas. Little get-togethers such as those lessen the strain of being apart from the kids.

CA's program cares for children as young as six weeks, and goes up through kindergarten. At kindergarten "graduation," CA chairman Charles Wang has given each graduate a full PC system. Just another benefit that other day care centers are hard-pressed to match.