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A library in Virginia has gone viral for having workstations designed specifically for caregivers with infants.
On Saturday, Ali Faruk, a father of two from Virginia, posted a photo of the workstations at the Fairfield Library, part of the Henrico County Public Library system in Virginia.
The workstations, or cubicles, are made up of a desk with a computer and an adjacent enclosed area for babies and toddlers.
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"A new public library in my area has these workstations for caregivers with babies," Faruk wrote in his tweet. "Maybe these are common in other places but I’ve never seen anything like this before."
In a follow-up tweet, Faruk added: "Public spaces available and accessible to all are so important. This is how we strengthen families and create a culture and community that values children."
Faruk’s original tweet quickly went viral. As of Thursday, the tweet has garnered more than 29,000 retweets and 241,300 likes.
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Faruk, who is also the director of public policy at Families Forward Virginia, a nonprofit dedicated to preventing child abuse and neglect, told Fox News Digital in an email that he didn’t expect the tweet to gain so much attention.
"Even to this day the numbers of likes and retweets feels unreal," he told Fox. "The reactions have been a deluge of parents and caregivers of young children saying they wish they had these when their kids were young."
A tweet showing workstations for parents and infants at the Fairfield Library in Henrico County, Virginia, recently went viral. (Courtesy of Ali Faruk)
Faruk said he feels similarly. Though his sons – 5 and 7 years old – are too old for the workstations to be useful to him now, he said he would have definitely used them when they were younger.
"We used to take our boys to public places a lot and place them on blankets on the floor," Faruk said of when his sons were infants. "I would’ve loved having stations like these because then I wouldn’t have to be super vigilant about another child accidentally running over my infant while they’re playing."
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The workstations, called "Fairfield Parent+Child Carrels," were manufactured by TMC Furniture, a Michigan-based furniture company, and designed in partnership with Quinn Evans Architects and the Henrico Public Library.
In a statement provided to Fox News Digital, Patty Conway, a Henrico Library community relations coordinator, said that the concept originally came from Barbara Weedman, who is the library director.
Weedman came up with the concept "as a solution to a common issue in public libraries that she had witnessed throughout her career, and one that is now resonating widely with busy families, and families simultaneously working and learning from home: how to balance computer work with caring for small children," Conway said.
"The Work and Play Stations help families in the library connect with information online and get work done on the computer while safely caring for their little ones hands-free," Conway added.
The workstations were made for the Fairfield Library in Henrico County, Virginia, which opened in October 2019, according to Conway.
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Blake Ratcliffe, the founder of TMC Furniture, told Fox News Digital that after the workstations were built for the Fairfield Library, TMC Furniture promoted them at a public library conference in March 2020. Though there was plenty of interest at the time, the coronavirus pandemic quickly shut everything down and interest in the workstations dropped, Ratcliffe said.
Since the workstations went viral after Faruk’s tweet, Ratcliffe said interest has increased dramatically, with inquiries from all over the world including the U.K., Japan and the Netherlands.
"We’re just blown away right now," Ratcliffe said.
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Faruk told Fox that he thinks his tweet was so popular because parents in the U.S. are so rarely accommodated for.
"It takes a village to raise a child and I loved seeing accessible spaces that are welcoming and safe for infants and parents," Faruk said. "Things like this help create those villages of support that all parents and infants need."
"It’s so isolating and stressful to be a parent of young children, especially infants," he added. "Ask any parent and they’ll tell you how they avoid a lot of public places, restaurants, etc., because accommodations and welcoming spaces are so rare."
He continued: "I think this photo really struck a nerve with parents in America about how all of that can be different if we prioritize kids and parents."
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