Taking the Plunge (Or Not) to Becoming a Stay-at-Home Father
As we approach Father’s Day I want to share some gritty and valuable advice I’ve gathered from the amazing stay-at-home fathers I’ve had the privilege of talking with over the years. (1) In a study I conducted between 2009 and 2012, I asked 45 stay-at-home fathers what advice they would give to a man considering becoming a stay-at-home father or to couples thinking about this work-life arrangement. Their advice is honest, forthright, and invaluable.
Below I share the best of their insights and guidance. For readability, I take license to shorten, tweek or paraphrase their words. Yet I’m careful to preserve the authenticity of what these men were trying to convey about the decision to stay-at-home. (2)
I hope these frank insights and suggestions are valuable to any man considering staying at home full time with their children (and/or their partner). These insights also may be valuable for men who currently are at home. If you have advice to share, please add a comment below.
So, here goes.
The Top 10 List of Advice to Consider Before Jumping into Stay-at-Home Fatherhood:
- Reflecting on Paid Work: Everyone’s probably got to go through feeling, ‘Oh, I’m at home. I’m not earning money and I’m not out there doing something.’ If that’s gonna bug you, do something about it or don’t worry about it. Its that simple.”
- Gaining Perspective: I mean I think it’s definitely a great experience just to give the perspective [of caring for your child to both husbands and wives], yeah, I don’t think there’s anything negative that can come from giving that perspective to both the man and the woman.”
- Listening to Partner: “I guess my advice would be to make sure that this is what they both want [the husband and the wife] . . . make sure that the wife wants to keep her career and that this is what’s going to be important to her [and] if the dad would rather be doing whatever he’s trained to do and getting paid for it, as opposed to being at home with the kids, then he should really do that. So he’s not gonna be happy, she’s not gonna be happy, so talk about it.”
- Loving Yourself: “Before you as a person can start raising a child, being the caregiver first and foremost you need to love yourself. You need to be able to on so many levels not just love yourself but have social skills that you’re able to meet people and have those types of social skills to help them to grow and become.”
- Communicating Often. “I think the biggest thing for any couple that would be going through [having a stay-at-home father and a primary earning mother] would be communication. Even if you’re comfortable with the whole process, there’s tension and stress in the situation, it happens. So as long as you’re communicating then things will be fine. But as soon as the communication breaks down, and as soon as you’re afraid of what the other person’s going to think or say, then problems will start.”
- Gathering Information: Talk to other people as much you can who have gone through the scenario. Try to talk to other stay-at-home dads whenever possible about their experiences. Obviously researching and reading. The more you know about the scenario the better off that you’ll be or the better parent or the more informed that you’ll be.”
- Understanding Challenges: “When the idea first came up with us, with me a stay-at-home dad, I had visions of reading all these books; it would be so great to sleep 18 hours a day but it’s a lot of work. In fact, I would argue this is no easier than going to work every day. So that’s the advice I would give them, is it’s not a vacation.”
- Evaluating Strenghts: “There is a lot of joy, absolutely, and I absolutely don’t regret any of it, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat and I think I had the right personality for this. I did not need a lot of praise. If you are one that always needs that pat on the back, good job, then staying at home I don’t think would be for you.”
- Anticipating Transitions: “I think that the male has to be very aware of how attached he is to his work persona and how that’s gonna, you know, how that’s gonna change. I think you have to look at that. And I think you have to look at the roles that they [both partners] currently have and see how that will transition when they’re making the change.”
- “Whatever you honestly feel is best for your kids is what you should do.”
Some of these pieces of advice may resonnate with you, others may not. But these insights are right from the trenches of full-time fatherhood. I hope you find them thought provoking and insightful.
In so many ways, these pieces of advice also are valuable to women considering staying at home with their children. For an excellent exploration of the decisions professional women make when deciding to leave full-time employment for full-time caregiving: Stone, P. (2010). Opting Out: Why Women Really Quit Careers and Head Home (University of California Press).
Until my next work-life blog . . .
Happy Father’s Day.
(1) To protect the confidentiality of the men who participated in my study, I do not provide the names of the men who shared these pieces of advice. Yet I thank all 45 of these men (and their wives) for sharing their experiences with me and time! I also thank the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and PSC-CUNY for their support of this project.
(2) If you’d like to read more of Prof Medved’s work see:
Medved, C. E. (forthcoming). Men narrating home. In Chawla, D. & Holman-Jones, S. (Eds.), Storying home: Place, identity and exile. Washington, D. C.: Lexington Books.
Medved, C. E. (2013). Fathering, Caregiving, and Masculinity: Stay-at-home fathers and family communication. In K. W. Floyd & M. T. Morman (Eds). Widening the Family Circle: New Research in Family Communication (pp. 115-132), 2nd edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Medved, C. E. & Rawlins, W. K. (2011). At-home fathers and breadwinning mothers’ articulations of work and family. Women & Language, 32, 9-40.
Hmmm, very interesting article. I think an ideal scenario is where both parents are working and we have network of mandatory kindergartens where parents may drop their children off on their way to work and pick them on their way back. Attending kindergarten and playing with other kids is very important for the development of our children.
But in practice, unfortunately, in the USA, we don’t have such kidnertagren system and one of the parents must stay home or hire aa nanny. The best option is to have mother stay at home and take care of the children rather than the father. A connection between the mother and the child is much stronger. After all, it is the women who are pregnant and carry their children in their bodies. It is the women who breastfeed. The women are basically the natural care givers.