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.

[shaggy eel]

BUMP.

[exnavychick]

Please, couldn't those self-absorbed brats in Generation X learn from the wisest of your generation--you?

Self-absorbed BRATS?? Nice, real nice. Boomers aren't perfect either, but if Gen-X'rs are "self absorbed brats" whose fault do you think that might be? Hmmmm....maybe the BOOMERS that "raised" them?? That cuts both ways, yanno.

[lowbridge]

You wouldnt have liked it. :-)

[familyop]

To be a lot more sincere, I agree with you on what works better. But I don't put the blame in general on either men or women who are caught up in the current fast money, bad future schemes. And most two-earner couples are dog tired when they get home to their kids who are reared by socialist others (public education and "daycare"). As for men with the "my daughters" this and "my daughters" that attitude [against the sons of others], IMO, our daughters would be much happier in an anti-feminazi kind of world--our western culture idiocy where men are generally and solely ridiculed in television, our universities, our workplaces--even elementary/primary schools. We flooded our labor pool long ago with wives and no-fault divorce, and that money has dried up. Now we flood it with people from the cheap Third World in an effort to keep what feels good right now going like a wildfire.

"Then it will be plain that the first condition for the liberation of the wife is to bring the whole female sex back into public industry, and that this in turn demands the abolition of the monogamous family as the economic unit of society" (Frederick Engels, "Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State").

Mao's Little Red Book on Women
http://www.paulnoll.com/China/Mao/Mao-31-Women.html

Some of Lenin's words on women
http://www.marx.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/nov/06.htm

The following is from the "Manifesto of the Communist Party" (Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Fredrick Engels)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm

"The bourgeois sees his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the instruments of production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion that the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women."

He has not even a suspicion that the real point aimed at is to do away with the status of women as mere instruments of production.

For the rest, nothing is more ridiculous than the virtuous indignation of our bourgeois at the community of women which, they pretend, is to be openly and officially established by the Communists. The Communists have no need to introduce free love; it has existed almost from time immemorial."

“Everyone who knows anything of history also knows that great social revolutions are impossible without the feminine ferment. Social progress may be measured precisely by the social position of the fair sex (plain ones included)” (Karl Marx Letter to Ludwig Kugelmann, MECW, Volume 43, p. 184, http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1868/letters/68_12_12.htm)

[hope]

ok

[Tax-chick]

We want to be independently wealthy so we can both stay home.

[familyop]

"...but if Gen-X'rs are "self absorbed brats" whose fault do you think that might be? Hmmmm....maybe the BOOMERS that "raised" them?"

...their feminist single mothers, that's who. I'm a Baby Boomer, and I know that my generation isn't worth the powder to blow it away. And it's my Baby Boomer generation, for the most part, that keeps that divorce industry going.

Don't pay any attention to the feminist majority among my spoiled rotten Baby Boomer peers--either the women among them or the male feminist bosses and bureaucrats who indoctrinated, bought and paid for them.

[sonofnun]

well, the original post is pulled, but I am wondering how staying at home would negate being the head of the household.
I know men who are paralyzed, whose other family members "work", men who work a little out of the house and homeschool their kids, and people in other situations, none of whom would qualify as having abdicated their "head of household" status.
Ah well, ...

[familyop]

Correction in my comment:
"...our western culture idiocy..." was meant to be "our world being full of the fallen western culture idiocy..."

[nmh]

Real men protect and earn the living.

Is it any wonder females look down on men?

It is the female that is supposed to stay home and raise the kids.

[exnavychick]

I know what you mean. I love my mother to death, but she really made some mistakes after she and my "father" got divorced,(They really should have gotten divorced, even though it was pretty bad for us afterwards) even she admits that. I (being the eldest, and only girl) basically raised us until my mom remarried.

She's not a bad person at all, but I think she bought rather heavily into the feminist propoganda, and I think that really caused problems for her kids. Then again, it's made me the conservative wonder I am today, lol, so I can't complain too much. :)

[Melas]

Ah so I'm not a real man? Is that it? Sigh...there's always an ******* in every crowd, and I guess today it's you.

[exnavychick]

Sure, ideally, that is exactly what would happen. But it doesn't always work out that way, and I didn't think any less of my husband when he was staying home with our kids. I had done it before (and am doing it now) and I know how hard a job it is, even when it's something you do willingly.

Mr. Ex is certainly a "real man", rest assured.

[HitmanLV]

Ultimately, and this isn't talked about very much, men that take the stay at home role are diminished (mostly subconsciously) in the eyes of their mates.

The traditional sex roles are encoded to a very large extent in both the male and female makeup. The male as hunter and provider, the female as gatherer and nest-builder.

Often (but not always) men who take this route subconsciously feel that they are not taking the classic role in caring for their families. Unease, mental distress, various types of stress-related issues, sexual dysfunction, and a diminished sex drive are not uncommon results (it's not hard to imagine why).

Women with mates who take this role usually verbally and consciously endorse and applaud it, but at a subconscious level realize that their mate isn't fulfilling his role as hunter and gatherer that her DNA tells her he must, so he is diminished as a male, as a provider, and as a source of sexual fulfillment. (Further they recognize that she isn't taking her preferred role - which has been usurped by the male - and that diminished the male further).

It's not uncommon for her to find it increasingly difficult to look to her mate as a source of strength and support (emotionally, physically, etc). Since he has been weakened in her eyes (and a lot of this is under the radar and manifests in unusual ways), she may find it increasingly difficult to be sexually excited by him anymore.

Often these women will become (very naturally) more excited by and attracted to more dominant males they encounter (I don't like the use of the hackneyed 'alpha male,' since its a silly concept really and 'alpha' suggests there can only be one, which is dumb).

Compared to her mate who has lost a big part of his male identity and who might suffer from sexual dysfunction, it's not unusual for the woman to become more sexually excited by a more dominant male, essentially a superior male in her (subconscious) view of the world. Sex with such a man, even if fleeting, is ultimately more rewarding for her emotionally and physically, and cuckolding her otherwise feminized mate is only fitting for the role he took, really: a feminized and inferior male.

Frankly I don't blame women in this position for being more sexually and emotionally excited by more dominant men.

When you get right down to it, there is nothing wrong with a woman rejecting an inferior male for a superior male - its really the most natural thing in the world (witness the consistent phenomena in the animal kingdom, for example).

This doesn't bother me much because....I'm a dominant male! ;-)

[Clemenza]

This doesn't bother me much because....I'm a dominant male! ;-)

Domination is sweeter than fornication!

[HitmanLV]

That's what all the women in my life have said, old pal! And they all kept coming back for more, until my web of lies collapsed and I had to find a new lady to share my space! ;-)

[ran15]

Very good post. The left can indoctrinate people to believe ona concious level whatever they want. But on the subconcious level they cannot change human instincts.

The left seeks the destruction of its own civilization, the order, so of course it pushes gender reversal. But we see in places where that is most advanced the pillars of the society, like marriages coming apart.

Common sense shows women have the organs for reproduction and nuturing, and hte psychological makeup to take care of multiple rug rats all day long. Btw I am an atheist, a right wing atheist, who judges things objectively, and most of the time I come to the same conclusion that the mainstream religions do.

[exnavychick]

No offense, but speaking as one who has been there...hogswallop!! :)

I know that you are speaking in generalities, and in that case, you may very well be correct. But I didn't find my husband to be diminished in anyone's eyes (except his own...with that one, you were dead on). THAT was a small problem, but all the rest was pretty much a load, sorry.

[hoppity]

I'm a SAHD. My son got really sick in '02, and my wife and I decided thru other by-products of his hospital stay that one of us needed to stay home. At the time I was a cop, and could take or leave my job. She still is a teacher, who made more money than I did once she got her Master's We weighed the benefits and detriments.

We came to the conclusion that me being home with the kids is better than sending them off to daycare. We couldn't afford to do it with my salary, unless I worked 60 hours a week, 60 miles away, so we took the plunge.

I have never gotten more crap from older people in my life. They think I'm a slacker, etc. Oh, well. It works for us. My kids love having dad home when they get home from school, and we spend summers, and Easter and Christmas break together as a family. And my wife 100% supports it. She won't even let me go back to work when I have talked about it.

Ideally, I believe that my wife should be home with the kids. She does a better job, but I am a better option than a stranger raising my kids.

[Melas]

sexual dysfunction, and a diminished sex drive are not uncommon results (it's not hard to imagine why).

Step away from the crack pipe. I've long since passed a decade staying home, and not a single episode of sexual dysfunction has darkened my doorway. My libido itself hasn't fallen much from my 20's. All told, from friends and acquaintences, I gather that they'd all envy my sex life if they only knew.

But that's one of the benefits of a single income family. You don't find yourself with two worn out partners, often with differing schedules who never find time for "quality time."