More Dads Take Stay-At-Home Route

WFTV ^ | 2/22/05 | Internet Broadcasting Systems

[qam1]

More Men Go From Boardroom To Playroom

ANNANDALE, Va. -- The job comes without a paycheck. The hours are long. The rewards can be priceless.

It's not something you put on your resume, but millions of men have decided to give up their careers and become stay-at-home dads, Washington, D.C., television station WRC reported.

Some mothers may resent the attention to stay-at-home dads, since they've been doing it for centuries.

But the station looked at the growing trend because it's a option many couples may not have explored.

This is about children, parents and a difficult choice.

That choice was the subject of the popular 1983 comedy "Mr. Mom." In that movie, a laid-off engineer stays home with his three kids while his wife returns to work.

It's fiction becoming a fact of life for a growing number of couples.

Chip and Heather Covell of Annandale made the decision eight months ago. As a special education teacher, Chip needed a break. Meanwhile, his wife's teaching career was taking off.

According to the latest U.S. Census figures, 3.6 million men stay home while their wives work. That's a 54 percent increase since 1986.

Human resource experts say the numbers will continue to climb.

"The so-called Generation X and Generation Y workforce are a little more open to the concept of staying at home and a spouse, in this case a wife, earning more than the husband," human resources manager Steven Williams said.

Damon Riley's wife is the vice president of a marketing firm. Staying home meant giving up his job as director of new student orientation at Georgetown University.

"Her salary was probably more than twice mine at the time, anyway. And having somebody come to the house was going to cost us almost all of my salary," Riley said.

Riley has been staying home since his twin daughters were born seven years ago.

Mothers in their Olney, Md., neighborhood are supportive.

"He's just one of the girls. No offense, Damon, but he's just one of us," stay-at-home mom Sophie Stopak said.

But fitting in can be difficult. That's where a group called DC Metro Dads comes in. The Bowie, Md., chapter meets every Monday.

"It gives us a network of other men, we get to sit around and talk about guy things," one of the dads said.

The couples told WRC that they began by doing the math. They compared child-care costs with the loss of one salary, and decided it was worth the sacrifice.

[Admin Moderator]

Knock it off.

[republicanbred]

Just my own story~my husband worked in management in the auto industry for 13 years while I was home with our children. He worked 60+ hours a week, and worried when he was at home about issues r/t his job. Needless to say, he really didn't know our children, how could he with the hours and stress he was under?
Anyway, I went back to work when our youngest was in kindergarten, and within a couple of years hit a 6 figure income at a job I love working about 35 hours a week. However, between his 60+ hours and my 35 hours, our daughters were getting the short end of the stick. It didn't take long to decide that one of our 6 figure incomes had to be traded so our daughters had a full-time parent. And it didn't take long to figure out whose job was the better.
So after two years of being the stay at home parent, my husband knows our daughters as well as I do, makes their lunches in the morning, goes to meetings with their teachers, etc. He has also put an 800 squre foot addition and a 3 car garage on our home during his spare time.
It isn't easy to walk away from the kind of money that he did, but our daughters were worth the sacrifice and then some. (and BTW, he is FAR form effeminate~he looks like a linebacker, loves to hunt and fish, and is ALL man!)

[Melas]

Be glad the moderator said to knock it off, and thank whatever god you pray to that you didn't say it to my face.

[exnavychick]

Well, I personally think it would set an excellent example for any daughter I would have had, but since I only have boys (4.5, lol) I would still say it set an excellent example for them, too. Namely, that their parents put their welfare first, above other considerations. He could have gone back to work (and in some ways, really wanted to) and we could have stuck them back in daycare until I got out of the Navy, but we felt it was better for one of us to stay at home raising them.

How you can think that it's better for both of us to be working and schlepping them off to daycare than for one of us to stay home (I didn't have that option at the time) and raise them. And nowhere did I state that my husband cheered me on to "support" him. In many ways, he was still supporting me by taking care of the kids when I couldn't be the one to do it. Maybe you ought to read more carefully before you go around making offensive remarks like that. And it IS offensive for you to basically question my husband's manhood the way you have. The man is a Marine, for crying out loud...not that I expected you to know that, but that's pretty much the point.

[luckystarmom]

My brother lost his job during the oil bust of the '80s. He had a degree in mechanical engineering, but couldn't find a job.

His wife had a degree in computer science, right when that field was taking off.

My brother stayed home. He died last year of cancer, but when he was alive he was a man's man. He was very outdoorsy, and loved to hunt and fish. He was also very athletic.

He was also a very big Bush supporter, and was sending out e-mails to people supporting President Bush until only a few months before he died.

It really was a blessing that he got to stay home with his kids because he died when he was only 49.

[Melas]

Sorry about your loss. As a man who's 41, 49 is way too young to die.

I'm sure his children have better memories of him than a lot of children who go their entire lives without ever really knowing their fathers.

[luckystarmom]

Yep! I'm sure your kids are enjoying having you around also!

[SamAdams76]

All this yip-yapping about "sissies" who stay home with their kids and what-not. I only see this pointless concern as a sign of one's insecurity about one's own maleness.

As a male who has spent the past 20 years fighting the endless office politics and climbing the corporate ladder, it is a fantasy of mine to just wake up in the morning and have nothing else to do but take care of the kids and do a little housework. Call me "effeminate" if you want but after two decades of the rat race, I can honestly say that the workplace is overrated.

Who cares whether it is the man or woman who stays home with the kids? So long as they don't go on the government dole and become a drag on society, who cares how they decide to work things out?

So if my wife wants to go off and play at being Carly Fiorina in some big corporation, I say all the power to her. I'd be happy to pick up a broom and learn how to use the damn dishwasher. And I'll bake the baddest cookies in town. Hell, I'll even invite you all to some Tupperware parties. I'll be Martha Stewart on steroids.

[Melas]

Yeah, I consider myself truly blessed in that regard. Of course there are a few side effects. My daughter for example isn't much on cooking, but can just about disassemble an Evolution engine all by herself, at 11.

[tman73]

If NOT working a full-time+ corporate job is effeminate, I sure as hell have been emasculated!!!

I have a Engineering degree, Series 6/7 License, Professional Inspectors License and chose to "give it all up" to be "Mr Mom".

My wife brings home the bacon (70k+) while I work at home trading stocks (MSEP is HOT!!), providing residential inspection services locally and proof read legal docs- all for a measly 40k+ a year. 80% of the housework is mine. Kids are out of school at 03:15 and receive the remainder of my days attention.

I feel bad for these metro males out humping corporate ladders for a "living". If it makes them feel fulfilled, who am I to judge...let men be men.

Does my wife think anything less of me since we worked out this arrangement????? Don't know, never had the need to ask.

[Dianna]

How imagination less do you have to be to call doing what you want in the time and order that you want drudgery?

I spent 10 years doing what **I wanted to do when I wanted to do it? Really? The baby got fed when he needed feeding and changed when he needed changing and napped when he needed napping. If I had errands to run they had to be before the baby's nap or after (provided that the nap would end with enough time to go to the store before the school kid comes home, of course).

If the floor got spilled on, I cleaned it. If crackers got smashed into the carpet, I vacuumed it. Oh, unless it was time to get dinner ready so it would be done around the time my husband got home. Of course, if the baby had a fussy afternoon...

Housework isn't a HARD thing to do. Never being finished with it is one hard thing to deal with. But what has always bothered me is the feeling that it doesn't matter what I do or don't do because 10 minutes after the floor is mopped someone is going to spill apple juice. My son WILL change his clothes 4 times per day. And if the last dish has gone into the dishwasher, someone will be in desperate need of a snack.

In my moodier moments it felt very much like sabotage.

[lizma]

I have a friend who is a stay-at-home dad who's an ex-navy pilot. Nothing girlie about him!

I actually know quit a few dad's who stay home with their kids, most of them are work-at-home dads.

[Melas]

I never felt the need to ask either.

[LibertarianInExile]

"Should be renamed Generation I.
I, I, I, I. The self-absorbed generation."

You posted the above in response to qam1's post. You proceeded to generalize about some generation "I" in responding to a post about Generation X, and it's easily inferred that the generation you find so self-absorbed is GenX.

Is it so "self-absorbed," then, that people who are members of that generation should post their feelings using a personal pronoun? If you were to search out the threads that don't use the pronoun "I" here, you would be pretty bored on FR.

It's notable that you don't name your own generation. It seems highly likely that there must be some good reason for your silence on that detail after such an obvious flamebait. What would that be, exactly?

[kpp_kpp]

um, you sound a tad insecure about your own... well forget it.

i suggest saving you personal issues for your therapist and make an attempt at defending your position instead of resorting to personal attacks and exposing your own inner fears.