Why I Heart Stay-at-Home Dads

I recently read an essay that got me thinking again about stay-at-home dads. 

The number one piece of advice that writer gives to dads who fill the primary caregiver role in their family is this: “If you are a man contemplating lead parenting, one of your first imperatives should be to find other lead dads. You will need them.”

It’s the exact same thing I say to moms who are struggling with motherhood: Find other moms!

Here’s the problem, it’s in part because I say, “Find other MOMS,” that it’s so hard for stay-at-home dads to access the same support system that moms lean on so heavily.

It’s not just this one example. I tend to call gatherings “moms group” instead of “playgroup,” which would be more inclusive. I host a regular “Moms Happy Hour” that’s come to be attended by so many stay-at-home or lead parent Dads that I’ve had to change the name. “Parent Happy Hour” just doesn’t have the same ring to it, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t the right thing to do. Those offering Mommy-Baby classes struggle with whether to call them Parent-Baby, only to be accused of sidelining childcare providers. It’s not perfect. It’s in progress.

Dads are shaking up things all around town and should continue to (nicely) demand their due recognition, to push into places where they belong just as much as any mom. They may find themselves more welcome than they expected, especially if they can manage to put themselves out there like moms do in the beginning of finding new parent friends.

This is really important and I have not always been good about it. I have caught myself feeling reluctant about having play dates with dads, and now I’m asking myself, “Why?”

The first time anyone ever asked me out on a play date, it was as risky and awkward and embarrassing as being asked on any kind of date. (I said yes, of course!) Most of those in my friend circles are married and well beyond the dating phase of their lives. Yet we now have play dates and family dates that seem every bit as high stakes. In so many ways, it’s exactly like dating—the potential for rejection, worrying someone is out of your league, hoping you will have anything in common.

And that’s one reason it’s different with dads. Men are people I’ve dated. In a whole different life, one left way, way, behind me now. Enough of me knows that play dates are not dating that I do it anyway, but I think women can be forgiven for having thoughts like these.

Another reason I think I’ve felt twinges of reluctance to play date with dads is this cultural stereotype floating around in the air that stay-at-home dads are men that cheat on their wives. I cannot think of a movie featuring a stay-at-home dad (those who aren’t gay) where that’s not part of the plotline. I don’t really think that the stay-at-home dads I know are out to have affairs, and have certainly never had a real life reason to worry about such a thing. But it’s just there anyway somehow.

And then, probably the biggest reason of all, moms are women. Dads are men. Women are just able to make connections to each other that aren’t possible with men. Our friendships are different and we need each other.

While I feel the need to apologize for the first two things, the third just is what it is. It’s why dads need dad-friends as much as they need women to open up their parent-group circles and be more welcoming.

This isn’t just to be nice. This is vital to the future of motherhood.

I think it’s time for women to reclaim motherhood, with a little help from the guys. Stay-at-home dads are the best thing to happen for women since the advent of birth control. Seriously. The best thing since birth control.

Being a stay-at-home mom is hard in this day and age. It’s tough for a college educated, career-tracked woman to step off that path and be totally ok with it. It’s hard not to feel like a bad feminist. It’s hard not to feel like a failure as a woman, even as you are doing this thing that is supposedly the fulfillment of your every need and desire as a woman.

The fact that there were men also doing what I was doing saved me from the feminist-failure spiral more than once. If it was only moms, I think I’d rather be working.

And the more stay-at-home dads around, the easier it will be for all of us to get back to work when we decide it's time. It will be part of a new normal--both men and women stepping aside for family and then stepping back to work. Somehow it seems crazy when it's only women doing it. But the stigma will be a lot harder to hold in place if men are doing it, too.

I’d love to see the gender balance skew even further toward equality. Better paternity leave, a paid family leave policy that is equal for male and female caregivers, and more flexible workplace rules would go a long way to making it a choice for anyone who wants to be at home with kids (or even aging parents or sick spouses!) to be there.

I would go as far as to say that women’s progress toward a more feminist motherhood as well as a more equal workplace depends on men’s progress. Fighting for them is fighting for ourselves. And that may just begin with a playgroup invitation.

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Imposter Mom Syndrome

Both times we left the hospital with new babies, I felt like an imposter. Like an overgrown teenager who didn’t take the grown-up test and wouldn’t have passed. “They’re really gonna let us just walk out the door like this, with a baby human? Who’s in charge of checking in to make sure we’re doing it right?”

I’ve talked to lots of friends about this imposter syndrome, and they have had this moment, too. One day, you wake up and the police officers are way younger than you, and it’s weird.

But I realized something this week: I’m a grown-up.

No, really, I totally am. Leaving a job that wasn’t working for me or my family was a decisive move. One of the most self-directed intentional thing I’ve ever done. There have been a lot of “Sure, why not?" moments along the way. There was an open door somewhere and I went through it.

This time, when my life wasn’t the way I wanted it to be, I changed it.

For now, I’ve renewed my stay-at-home status. There are people who believe I am doing just the right thing, focusing on my family, not working outside the home. Some of them, I would not like very much. And there are people who think I’m a relic, not living up to modern day commandments. I probably wouldn’t like most of them either.

This week it hit me—I’m in charge of me.  The only question I need to answer in my current self-doubting, insecure incarnation is this: Am I ok with me?

I know that sounds horribly trite, like a big fat cliché. I’ve had these thoughts many times, but this time was different. Because this time I’m a grown up.

The people who would judge who I am based on my current state of affairs—one way or the other—will step off, as we used to say back in the day, if I feel good about what I’m doing and emanate that feeling. Or at least I’ll stop seeing their judge-y faces because I’m too busy living my life according to my own, grown-up desires.

Don’t get me wrong here. There are days when I’m no Rosie the Riveter. The self-confidence required to not only figure out what you want to do, but to do it and not ask anyone else for advice, that’s pretty grown-up. There are bound to be slip-ups.

In grad school, I had a professor who told me that my poetry is “not for everyone,” but that people who “get” me will “really get” me. It’s kind of like being okay with that. I’m not for everyone.

Over the last six years, since I have become a mother, I have found it incredibly hard to be okay with me, to feel confidence in my choice, but I never really figured out whether those questioning voices were coming from someone else or from me.

When I was first home with my first baby, I went through a whole messy process of trying to figure out who this new person was. She doesn’t work, she runs playgroups, she does mommy and me yoga. Was that ok? Was I happy? Did I need more? And then the anxious questions tumble out… What if my husband left me? What if he suddenly died? It was a vulnerable place to be and it made me very insecure—financially and emotionally.

Home again now, after working a real, pays-me kind-of-job, I’m cycling through all of that again. All of the doubts, the insecurities and the questions came back at me full force in a way I had not expected.

Working at a job gave me the confidence that I still have value in that part of the world, that I have something to offer and am welcome if/when I choose it. I spent money without checking in first, because it was my money. And I hadn’t even really noticed that, when I wasn’t working, I had felt like it wasn’t mine. With the first paycheck, that feeling of security came back and reminded me what life is like when you earn your own money.

That may be the hardest part of being “at home” for me—completely relying on another person in a whole body-whole life kind of way. Just like falling in love and realizing what you’ve just handed to someone is the ability to hurt you.

Having kids adds to this, because it’s about more than whether I get hurt, it’s about my instinct to protect these vulnerable offspring who have been entrusted to me. What if I’m suddenly, by accident or choice, the only one to love and feed and clothe and support them? Yikes.

Having a job comforted that part of my mind. I thought it would last, but now I think it’s just a part of it. Being a “stay-at-home” mom is a choice to be vulnerable, and it needs to be paired with the peace of mind that I would be able to do all of those grown-up things if it was left to me alone. And then letting it go.

Because you can’t think about all of the weight of that every day and stay sane.

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Someone Has to Be the Wife

It’s 11:30 in the morning on a Tuesday and I can’t find a parking spot at the local mall.

Who are all of these people who are running to Target in the middle of a workday?  In my imagination, it breaks down something like this: retirees, moms with babies, people running errands at an early lunch, a parent taking her kid out to lunch after a doctor appointment, people who work at night, unemployed people, freelancers.

If everyone works the 9 to 5 life we all assume most people live, this thing would collapse. Someone has to take the kid to the doctor. Someone has to pick up the dry cleaning. Someone has to buy a gift for the birthday party this weekend. Someone has to write a blog post… Okay, maybe not that one… But seriously, what are all of these people doing here? Shouldn’t they be at work?

In the last month, being newly home again, with kids in school for most of the day, I have crossed so many things off my to-do list, things that have been piling up since the first kid was born. I mean, I’m still not unpacked from moving two years ago, but I did manage to clean out the fridge, organize the hall closet, get some shoes repaired, re-organize the kitchen so things aren’t spilling out from every cabinet.

It’s a really boring list, actually, but it feels great to cross things off of it. I’ve even done the dishes on a semi-regular basis. Still need to work on getting to the grocery store for more than the things we needed yesterday. But I have been working out and writing and doing volunteer work. I might even find time to read a book one of these days.

“The list” got especially long while my husband and I were both working—at least when I was home with kids I could get one or two things done on any given day. But with both of us employed? So. Much. Stress. We contracted out what we could—sent the laundry to be washed, got groceries delivered, had someone clean our house occasionally. We’re lucky to be able to do that. But there’s only so much you can pay other people to do for you if you’re not Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt.

Have I mentioned recently how much I love stay-at-home dads? Love. Them.

If there were no stay at home dads, I would have a much, much harder time with “not working.” If all of the everything-that-needs-to-be-done-to-keep-a-family-running-along-somewhat-smoothly was only done by women, I would totally quit. But these days, there are these magical creatures called “dads” and some of them even do the things that “moms” are supposed to do.

There is no good reason why it should be the female partner who “stays home” and does all of these things, but it’s not like it can just be ignored. If today’s work culture feels dated in the way it assumes that everyone has a spouse at home to manage the family’s business, today’s marriages, with our Gen X opinion that men should pitch in, are working to upend the assumption that it should always be a female spouse who does that work. Dads can do it too and these days, some of them are.

To me, they feel like feminist heroes, fighting for equal access to do what has long been women’s work and supporting their working wives. (I don’t know how to navigate this discussion with equal emphasis on all of every possible pronoun, which is another way in which traditional marriage is being modernized—newly-married gay and lesbian couples need to manage the same crap as the rest of us. When they ask the “who should do what?” question, it opens up the possible answers for all of us just a little bit more.)

A stay-at-home dad friend told me he called this job the “cruise director.” Who knows what you do, but there’s a lot of it and it never ends.

I’m not saying that it’s not possible for both spouses to work, especially once the kids are in school for large parts of the week. There’s before care and after care and summer camps and day-off activities and a million other ways that American parents have pasted together a “We can make this work!” collage. But someone has to find the aftercare, sign up for the camps before they fill up, stay home with sick kids.

Most jobs just aren’t flexible enough to account for the fact that the person doing them is a human being with, if not children, parents, friends, hobbies, need for air and food and exercise. Maybe you can squeeze in a run at the gym during lunch and grocery shopping every Sunday, followed by making the meals for the week that you won’t have enough time to make after a long workday. I’m tired just writing about it.

With my first post-motherhood stint at “working” now behind me, I can now announce first-hand what everyone already knows—this way of life is no way to live. Not happily. Not for long. Because eventually, you will have a kid who gets the flu for two weeks or a spouse who’s in the hospital or a parent who dies, and you won’t be able to help it. Your human side will show.

When I say “Someone Needs to Be the Wife,” I don’t mean that these are womanly things for women to do and that not doing them is shirking some biological responsibility. I have plenty of male friends who are better at cruise directing—and happier to do it—than their other half. I sincerely hope that, as more and more men want to be involved in their children’s lives and want to share the to do list with their spouse, this will feel less gendered.

Maybe as we notice more male cruise directors, the value of the work that cruise directors do will be heightened. If it’s not just the work of wives, maybe we will be able to admit that it does still need to be done by someone—whether it’s one spouse or the other, shared evenly or divided in an individualized “works-for-us” kind of way or even delegated out to paid professionals. It won’t, however, go the way of the dodo just because the forever-at-home wife and mother is fast becoming a thing of the past.

So, a hearty salute to all the men who are running errands and buying birthday presents and cooking dinner side-by-side with me today. Thank you for being “the wife” so I don’t have to be only and forever “the wife.” Thank you for making the phrase “women’s work” sound pre-historic. Your feminism is so necessary.

100 Different Thoughts on Being a Stay-at-home Mom But I Only Have Time to Write 46

As I head back to the world of gainful employment and go through some sort of mid-mom-life identity crisis, I need to get a few things off my no-longer-nursing chest. Some of these thoughts are about all of the times I’ve felt like I had a chip on my shoulder about something but didn’t say anything because I’m not a mommy warrior. Plus, five and a half years and two kids later, I may have actually learned a few things. Maybe one or two. The other 44 are just filler.

1. Fact: “What do you do all day?” is the dumbest question you can ask a stay-at-home parent. 

2. “What "else" do you do?” Also a rude question. Do you ask your working friends what they do other than their job? And if they’re not in a band or writing a novel do you assume they’re wasting their life away?

3. A little advice: Before you ask any question of a stay at home parent, ask yourself if you would ask the same of someone who works? Any question you would not ask your friends with 40-hour jobs is probably rude or intrusive or both.

4. You know how lawyers have to account for all their time in 15 minute increments to prove that they were doing something worthwhile with their time? It’s kinda like that, except people who expect a full report are not your boss.

5. Your “boss” can be a real jerk and it’s ok to think that, but when you think it too often, find a way to get away.

6. Find a moms group. Or other moms. More than one. If you don’t, you’ll never last at home.

7. You need time alone, away from the baby. You may not understand why at first, but you just do. Trust. Plan.

8. Truth: There are other ways of finding out what stay at home moms do all day. Try: Do you take any classes with your kid? Have you found a moms group? How was your week? 

9. There are good days and bad days and that is not different than any other job.

10. Hours pass by when I couldn’t say what I did. It’s called mothering.

11. Sometimes I can do more in one hour than you did all week. Sometimes I don’t get that hour.

12. Don't tell me you could never do what I do. It's condescending. Cleary what you mean to but wouldn’t say is: I would never do what you do.

13. Truth: If you have any reason to believe the SAHM considers herself a feminist, she will be defensive about everything all the time. Deal with it.

14. I hate the acronym “SAHM” but I also think all acronyms are simultaneously stupid and elitest.

15. It’s such total crap that in the Era of Choice Feminism there is any judgment at all about whether working or taking care of your kids during the day is feminist or not feminist. 

16. If you know one stay-at-home mom or dad, you can pretty much extrapolate what they’re all like. Right? And then definitely, please, we would love for you to share your wild generalizations with the world. Preferably in the comments section of a website meant to be supportive of new mothers.

17. What gives my life meaning, what “else” I do, what is still mine alone… None of these things are any of your business if we are not friends.

18. If you are not offering to watch my kids, don’t tell me I look tired.

19. Truth: The annoying part of pregnancy where everyone suddenly thinks your body is public property and acquaintances expect answers to intimate questions? Yeah, that keeps happening. 

20. Don't make assumptions about how much or how little money my family must have because I’m staying at home.

21. Don’t assume I’m happy all the time. Or expect that I should be.

22. Don’t assume that I think I love my kids more than a mom who chooses to or needs to work. I don’t think your choice is bad, just because I made a different one. Some days I’d swap.

23. Some days I wouldn’t, not for anything. Picnics and sunny days and other clichés are usually involved. 

24. If you didn’t know me before I was a mom, I must not have done anything with my life except wait to become a mom. Obviously.

25. Don't assume I will never work again. Lots of moms stay at home for 2 months, 1 year, 3 years, until kindergarten… Most of us don’t know our path back until it’s there.

26. Once you admit that you’re looking for paid work again, you become an unemployed person who cares for the kids during the day. Lots of people think of all stay-at-home dads this way from day 1. That seems fair, right?

27. If you stay a home after all of your kids are school age, are you a stay-at-home mom or do you suddenly turn into a housewife? Maybe. But it’s no one’s business beyond your family walls. 

28. Some kids need more of their mothers than others. Some mothers are built differently than other mothers. If being at home works for you and your kids and your family, rage on. 

29. Stay-at-home parents shouldn’t feel like they have to do anything more than be with their kids. But that’s really hard.

30. If you’re not paying attention, you’d be surprised how many things would grind to a halt without the unpaid labor of women, including stay-at-home moms.

31. If most women today take some amount of time away from a job when they have a baby and most women head back to work at some point later, it shouldn’t be so scary to have a “gap” on a resume. But it totally is.

32. Even if you think you’ won’t end up doing more chores because your job is supposed to be daytime parenting and your spouse’s job is what it is and everything else should remain the same, you will and it doesn’t.

33. The primary caregiver is stressed. The primary breadwinner is stressed. Try to hold hands and walk across the bridge to each other’s island now and again.

34. I never felt like it was his money. It was always our money. Just not my money.

35. Laundry used to be this kind of romantic thing we did together. There was nothing about laundry in our wedding vows. Yet hours have been lost sorting socks. Hours, people.

36. We are not all Mary Poppins.

37. The ones who look like Mary Poppins—which by the way, is the best movie I’ve ever watched with my kids—also sometimes cry to themselves while their husbands sleep by their side. 

38. It’s hard. It’s lonely. It’s freaking amazing.

39. If you never tell another stay-at-home parent that you’re struggling, they won’t tell you either and you’ll both think everyone else has it all together all the time and you’re a big mess.

40. Staying at home can be made to seem just as romantic as working. And just as unromantic.

41. You do not need to work harder on tummy time because your kid had better be ahead of the curve if you’re home with them every day. 

42. To stay-at-home, you don’t have to be the sort of parent that gets down on the floor and plays with your kids all day. If they lay on a blanket and watch you fold the aforementioned laundry or help unload the dishwasher, they’re good. Kids who help with errands and chores are happy kids. You don’t even have to do Gymboree.

43. It’s ok to drink in the afternoon if you invite another mom and call it a playdate.

44. I am a whole person. I am not my kid. I don’t take my identity from being a mom and it doesn’t take my identity from me. At least not forever.

45. Everything is half done all the time and you have to let it go. If you have a daughter and she’s old enough ask her to sing you the song. She’ll be happy to oblige.

46. I’m really glad I did it and I’m really glad I’m done.

What do you think? Any stay-at-home mom thoughts to share?

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