NEAT–Stay Home Dads Totally Know What They’re Doing
I just read a really neat article called What Moms Can Learn From Dads.
The article mentions how there are more and more families these days run by stay at home dads. Our family was one of those for a few years, so this topic interests me a lot even now. It was fascinating, though difficult in many ways, to see the differences in my husband and myself as stay at home parents.
The article confirms a really odd thing about women and men as parents. When dads stay home with children, apparently they have NO issues relaxing when they need to and getting their wives to take over. However, as most of us knew long before reading this article, stay at home mothers tend to have a really hard time taking one or two evenings a week to get their own stuff done–and even when they do, lots of people think they’re selfish for it. But not dads, oh no, they aren’t at all selfish for needing a break. Isn’t it strange how dads seem to get more of a break from themselves and society too?
Well, in our case though, people were also quite judgemental about the dad being at home. They definitely felt that I should be staying at home, and my husband should be the one working out of the home. (He did work while staying home, but he did projects from home–like I do now. We just kind of switched roles several years ago.)
Why is everyone so judgmental, darn it? Hey, how did I stray from the topic of parenting to the topic of being judgmental? Whatever, heaven knows it’s not my job to change anyone. I can barely change my own bad habits enough to get myself in bed by 12:00 am. But do you see how I’m trying. See, it’s 11:40 pm now, and I am signing off. Goodnight.
June 25th, 2008 at 6:13 am
When we move back to California in a few weeks, my husband will be taking over as the stay at home parent. My grandmother has such a hard time understanding this concept. She’s always suggesting places where he can apply, even though my job will be great regarding income and benefits, etc. I think “dad bringing home the bacon” is merely an old fashioned way of thinking and people are just now learning how to live with it!
June 25th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Yes, familiar story there. My husband did contract work, so had NO benefits. I had GREAT benefits, and we knew we wanted more children. For us other options weren’t really interesting–because we knew we didn’t want to send our son to daycare when he was really little. (I realize everyone makes the decision they need to daycare-wise, but this was ours, and many people just didn’t get it!)
We’ve lived in several cities in California and have met a million stay at home dad’s here! I think your husband will be in good company.