Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

More Dads Take Stay-At-Home Route
WFTV ^ | 2/22/05 | Internet Broadcasting Systems

Posted on 02/22/2005 2:46:56 PM PST by 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.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Extended News; US: District of Columbia; US: Maryland; US: Virginia
KEYWORDS: emasculated; fatherhood; genx; mrmom; stayathomedads; wimps; workforce
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 121-140141-160161-180181-183 next last
To: Melas

He explained it well enough.
There are sick cruel nasty people/trolls who hate Free Republic and make personal attacks using lies and taunts and wild speculations against individual FReepers on another forum, after spying on us here. Sometimes they simply have to post on Free Republic, too, and disrupt threads just to show off their smug mean streaks.


161 posted on 02/23/2005 8:19:53 AM PST by ValerieUSA
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 158 | View Replies]

To: ValerieUSA

TY. I take it a core group of individuals are responsible? I always seem to draw my share of taunts and insults, but I always thought it because I was speshul like my momma said.


162 posted on 02/23/2005 8:23:04 AM PST by Melas
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 161 | View Replies]

To: Lazamataz

Yeah, I've run into the group that hates FR several times, although a lot of them seem to have been banned in the last couple of months. An improvment IMHO.


163 posted on 02/23/2005 8:24:48 AM PST by Melas
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 160 | View Replies]

To: Melas
Yeah, I've run into the group that hates FR several times, although a lot of them seem to have been banned in the last couple of months. An improvment IMHO.

There ya go!

Another satisfied customer!

164 posted on 02/23/2005 8:26:00 AM PST by Lazamataz (Proudly Posting Without Reading the Article Since 1999!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 163 | View Replies]

To: Lazamataz

Lazamataz,

You started and contributed all the hate of FR and Bob Jim Rob on various sites you were banned from. You took out a paint brush and painted me as an anti-freeper when the truth is you used to get made fun of the most on there not FR. Therefore you had a nervous breakdown online because you were called Laz the spazz on sites I never read or knew of there existance until you posted constantly about them on LP.

You are a low life weasal. Is your real life gratified for being the way you are online?

I am not on FR because of you. I like the catholic threads. Believe it or not it is NOT all about you.


165 posted on 02/23/2005 9:06:53 AM PST by Gazoo
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 160 | View Replies]

To: Lazamataz

What do you mean a moderator has made short work of me?

What are you talking about? You know nothing about me nor have a clue is your diatribe who I am. Have you lost it, completely? What is your problem? Im done talking to you.


166 posted on 02/23/2005 9:38:03 AM PST by Gazoo
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 157 | View Replies]

To: Gazoo
What do you mean a moderator has made short work of me?

Your message is deleted.

What are you talking about? You know nothing about me nor have a clue is your diatribe who I am.

No, you're not Mrs. Smartass PhD. Honest. ;^)

Im done talking to you.

Another Satisfied CustomerTM!

167 posted on 02/23/2005 10:14:17 AM PST by Lazamataz (Proudly Posting Without Reading the Article Since 1999!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 166 | View Replies]

To: Gazoo
You started and contributed all the hate of FR and Bob Jim Rob on various sites you were banned from.

I STARTED hate-FR and Hate Bob and JR sites?

Psychotic, heal thyself.

You took out a paint brush and painted me as an anti-freeper when the truth is you used to get made fun of the most on there not FR.

You, Mrs Smartass PhD, and your cronies make fun of MANY freepers. You lie about them (as demonstrated in your first quote), you distort, you exaggerate, and you present one side of every story.

It's what you do.

I pity your tiny little lives.

Buh bye.

168 posted on 02/23/2005 10:17:37 AM PST by Lazamataz (Proudly Posting Without Reading the Article Since 1999!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 165 | View Replies]

To: Gazoo; Lazamataz

You all should know that now that I'm finally 18, I have plans. As soon as I make enough money for the flight, I'll quit this job and come over there to marry Laz. I won't miss the old smelly German men at all.

I've waited five years for this!

Oh, how I love you, and I miss you, Laz . . . I cannot WAIT to get over there. (Bangkok isn't fun anymore anyway.) I figure six, maybe seven more months of hooking should do it.

I can't wait to see you again for real, cheuun jai!


169 posted on 02/23/2005 12:18:36 PM PST by Bibliophile
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 165 | View Replies]

To: Bibliophile
Oh my darling Punnee, I have missed you. As you know, I was married when we first met in that seedy strip joint, but now I am free!

Let us dance the dance of love, cheuun jai, for the world is now our lotus flower.

My darling Punnee, I have missed you. Now that you are of legal age, our union can be recognized!

For you, and know phom rak khun.


170 posted on 02/23/2005 12:33:17 PM PST by Lazamataz (Proudly Posting Without Reading the Article Since 1999!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 169 | View Replies]

To: Lazamataz

Ch'an rak kun!


171 posted on 02/23/2005 12:57:13 PM PST by Bibliophile
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 170 | View Replies]

To: luckystarmom
"For one thing, housework is very hard work. It is physically much more demanding than sitting at a desk 9 hours a day."

That would depend upon what you are doing at that desk. Brain surgery involves standing still and manipulating your fingertips, but I'll guarantee you'll feel like you fought Joe Fraizer afterwards. I have stared at a computer monitor for three hours, trying to make dialog in scene 1 comport with dialog in scenes 2-10 and 12--15. I wrote half a page and felt beat up.

That aside: I have dug 4 foot by 4 foot by 4 foot bell holes all day and THAT is hard. I have cut stone (granite) all day--no lunch as I work for myself-- at 10 degrees with a howling wind, That is hard. I have forman-ed an underground gas crew on a main traffic artery at the height of rush hour and that is hard. I have fed dual parties of hundreds each at the same time in different rooms and that is hard.

House work is NEVER finished so it can be dispiriting but it is NOT physically demanding and it is not tiring. I've done housework all my life and I consider it mild to nothing.
172 posted on 02/23/2005 3:05:13 PM PST by TalBlack
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 100 | View Replies]

To: TalBlack

There are only a relative number of men that actually do anything physical in their jobs. These days, most have desk jobs.

Yes, there are definitely physical jobs out there, and I am not denying that.

However, housework is pretty much the same any way you look at it.

If you compare the average physical aspects of running a home over the average physical aspects of working, then I would venture to say that running a home wins.

Now running around chasing toddlers, teaching kids how to ride bikes, staying up most of the night with sick kids are also very tiring activities, then you add housework on top of that and the fact that you never get a break even on weekends and holidays or when you are sick, and it is exhausting.


173 posted on 02/23/2005 3:11:07 PM PST by luckystarmom
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 172 | View Replies]

To: 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"

Forum big-mouths don't have the balls to say such things to anyones face. To tell a man to his face that he is not and CANNOT be a man is to invite the wildest beating imaginable.

Reading their posts I actually thought "They'd never say it to his face". And they wouldn't.


174 posted on 02/23/2005 3:13:13 PM PST by TalBlack
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 124 | View Replies]

To: Modernman

When my wife and I finished grad school we were making roughly the same money. I worked for a public railway and she was in finance. After 10 years and two kids, it became clear that her career had a serious upside while mine did not.

I decided to stay home, we had another child (feminized ? NOT!), and now she is making multiples more than I ever did.

I think anyone who loves his kids and his wife would agree that I made the right decision. What was I supposed to do ? Force her to quit her job, so I could work at a fraction of her salary ? I think not.

Win, Win, I would say. Conservatives better get used to the idea of Stay at Home Dads, it is the wave of the future.


175 posted on 02/23/2005 3:28:05 PM PST by Gaetano
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: luckystarmom

Now running around chasing toddlers,..

My comments are meant for post toddler life. Toddlers are hell on two legs.

In all honesty I would clean the kitchen floor once a week and if anyone wanted it cleaned oftener they would be free to grab a swab.

Ditto the other housework jobs. THEN I would grab the kids do what ever struck my fancy. If you don't reward yourself for a job well done the job becomes drudgery. So vacuume the rug good, give the kitchen floor hell and then get the hell out of the house.


176 posted on 02/23/2005 3:37:59 PM PST by TalBlack
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 173 | View Replies]

To: TalBlack

Try having a 2 year old and twin babies. Then throw in that one of the twins had severe asthma, and the other one had brain damage.

I think my husband would agree that he had it easier.

Now that my kids are older and all in school, then I probably have it easier.


177 posted on 02/23/2005 4:04:20 PM PST by luckystarmom
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 176 | View Replies]

To: Gaetano
I think anyone who loves his kids and his wife would agree that I made the right decision. What was I supposed to do ? Force her to quit her job, so I could work at a fraction of her salary ? I think not.

Some posters on this thread would accuse you of "not being a man." They would rather that you make some sort of ideological choice to work, even if that means less money for your family, than let your wife be the earner in the family. They don't live in the real world. These days, a wife can make as much as, or more than, her husband. This isn't the 50's anymore.

Win, Win, I would say. Conservatives better get used to the idea of Stay at Home Dads, it is the wave of the future.

We're going to see more flexibility as to who stays home. The wife might do it for a few years, followed by the husband. One of the parents might telecommute, or both of them will. The "Leave it to Beaver" household of the 50's is mostly a thing of the past.

178 posted on 02/24/2005 7:01:02 AM PST by Modernman ("Normally, I don't listen to women, or doctors." - Captain Hero)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 175 | View Replies]

To: Modernman
The "Leave it to Beaver" household of the 50's is mostly a thing of the past.

Just as well. I look like hell in pearls anyway.

179 posted on 02/24/2005 8:04:43 PM PST by Melas
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 178 | View Replies]

To: qam1

Do Stay At Home Dads get mad if their wives give them a vacuum cleaner for Christmas?


180 posted on 02/24/2005 8:12:25 PM PST by Diddle E. Squat
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 121-140141-160161-180181-183 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson