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Men and Women, Equal Yet Different: A Brief Study of the Biblical Passages on Gender by Alexander Strauch |
I wonder if you'll want to get me banned, too.
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.
SAHD Ping
Whatever produces the most time with the kids and still pays the bills, that's what you should do.
Ping list for the discussion of the politics and social (and sometimes nostalgic) aspects that directly effects Generation Reagan / Generation-X (Those born from 1965-1981) including all the spending previous generations (i.e. The Baby Boomers) are doing that Gen-X and Y will end up paying for.
Freep mail me to be added or dropped. See my home page for details and previous articles.
"More dads" don't have another good choice when their wives (and now foreigners) have been preferred over them in the job market for so long.
And that's the only way it really works correctly. I haven't seen any of these stay-at-home Dads that weren't lacking somehow--feminized men, meanwhile, the nurturers of the family are out there dealing with everything else and, I suspect, doing more than their fair share after they get home.
Spoken like a troll who registered 2 days ago.
My wife and I are fighting over who gets to stay home once we have kids. We both make pretty much the same salary. so we'd be in the same place, financially.
Personally, I'd love to stay home with the kids. It seems like a much more valuable use of my time than working as a lawyer.
I'm a child and family therapist by profession. I'm going to get a job taking care of other people's brats so I can pay someone to take care of mine?
I think not.
What does that have to do with who takes care of the kids? What's a more worthwhile use of a man's time, raising his children or working a corporate job?
That may be true, but real life isn't always so easy. My husband was unemployed for a time, and he stayed home with the children. He wasn't very comfortable with it, and it wasn't something he really CHOSE to do, but lemme tell ya, there were lots of guys I met that sort of envied him the time he got to spend with our boys. He's not a good housekeeper, lol, so I continued doing that, but he did a great job with the boys, whether or not he was "biblically and genetically predisposed" to be the head of our house. In fact, I would say that his status in that regard was largely unchanged...it takes more to being a husband and father than just bringing home the bacon, imo.
Call in the kitties.
That said, having a daddy at home taking care of the kids is far far better than shuffling the kids off to "daycare".
Good for you!
Theres nothing wrong with a man staying home and "raising the children. If women can go into the workplace and do what was considered a "man's job" just as well as the man, then a man can stay home.
I, I, I, I. The self-absorbed generation.
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Men and Women, Equal Yet Different: A Brief Study of the Biblical Passages on Gender by Alexander Strauch |
I wonder if you'll want to get me banned, too.
I'll agree with all of that.
Not like those selfless, quiet baby boomers...
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