The Reality of Being a Stay At Home Dad

So, you want to embark on the journey of being a stay at home dad. I wish you the best of luck. While it can be incredibly rewarding, it is not without its drawbacks.

My journey started several years ago with several factors pushing me in this direction.

1. We were stuck facing ridiculous prices at day care at a day care center we despised.
2. We had responsibilities taking care of a mother battling late stages of breast cancer
3. I was in a high paying job but was absolutely miserable with the conditions at my employer

So, after a question posed to my wife about what she thought, we were off on the journey. My wife was working part time as a school teacher. We thought that would allow me to work on consulting type of projects out of our house. Furthermore, being a teacher, I thought that I should be able to work for a couple of months during the summers. Even the best laid plans sometimes fail. Although I had telecommuted with my previous job, we found it hard to maintain a balance. Any normal appointments like Dr visits, hair cuts etc, immediately fell into my days when I thought I would work. I also found it hard to bounce back into my work after maybe having 3 or 4 days away from my work. I’m a morning person. No doubt about it, but this also made my work more difficult. By the time the day was wrapping up, my wife was home, kids were back from school, I was exhausted and the last thing I wanted to do was look at my work outside of our family.

Stay at home dads can expect to handle all of the daily grind as well as those nitty gritty details that your wife probably never handled. So off you go with kids in tow, making sure that the kids are dropped off and picked up from school or other appointments. Laundry, grocery shopping, cleaning all slip into the gaps in your schedule. Or, if you are like me, I had to plan where in our schedule to get these things done. If you get these tasks completed, then you might be faced with plumbing repairs, painting, installing new flooring or any other household tasks that come up. For most families where both parents work, they complete a lot of these tasks at night. In your case, it is likely that your wife wont be happy about splitting up duties after a hard day at work, especially if they have the least suspicion that your day was much easier than yours. Unfortunately, this stereotype is almost impossible to avoid for any stay at home parent. Things like laundry and cleaning never get noticed, unless it isn’t done.

Be prepared to be alone much of the time. I moved from a job where I spent a great deal of time away from the office. Relationships with coworkers were fairly superficial if they existed at all. I also have never been comfortable with joining other moms in planned outings to get children together. You may believe that your relationship is really strong, but your wife will not see the benefit of you hanging out for a portion of your day socializing with mothers. It is guaranteed that she wont imagine an overweight  house keeper type of image. She is going to imagine the ex prom queen that now gets to stay at home because she married the Vice President of Wendy’s. Lack of social connections can really weigh on your mind when you feel that there is little escape from your daily grind. It was even more difficult in my case, because I have never been the “guy’s” guy. You know the one, the guy that plans his entire Sunday around football, that reads the sports page first, that still wants to get together at the bar with his friends. I love college football, but I don’t follow other sports. It is more likely that I would participate in a sport rather than watch it. I never really got it. So, put me together with a bunch of guys, it is likely that I have little to say, unless the topic turns to adding an additional to your house, removing a wall, creating a sculpture or something else where I can put my hands to use.

Here is another twist. You’re likely depriving your wife of a role that she thinks should be her’s. My wife is very well paid, her benefits are fantastic and she genuinely likes her job, but that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t want to be the one staying at home.

Our family is approaching another transition point. Our kids are both approaching school age. While many women prefer to stay at home maintaining the home and taking care of all of the other daily details, I have no such intention. I want to be working in a traditional sense. I can work for myself, work for a new employer, it really doesn’t matter. I need to find the kind of satisfaction that comes from working to create something that you can call your own. That seems to rarely be the case when you are a stay at home parent. Cleaning, just doesn’t give me much satisfaction. Yeah, I manage to clean our clothes without having colors bleed onto the whites. This brings me to our last concern. I have been out of the work force for several years. Much has happened in my absence and it is likely that I will need to seriously catch up and educate myself before being able to pursue a new job. I am slightly better off if I choose a consultant type of role, only because you don’t have to prove your self worth before being hired. Learning as you go is possible in this context.

I have loved staying at home with my kids, but it hasn’t been all wine and roses. It will strain your marriage, be personally frustrating and will cost your family tens of thousands of dollars in lost income. Think hard about whether you can handle the strains that are commonplace. If you still think that you have what it takes, jump on board. It isn’t likely that you will regret it in the end.