The Life Role of Stay at Home Dads

I want to share with you a portion of a paper I am doing in graduate school. I chose to talk about Stay at home dads. Let me know what you think?

After a couple has children, society assumes the wife will stay home with them. Often, this is an assumed life role of the woman but in some instances men become the stay at home parent. Now, both partners usually work prior to having children and the woman usually has as much vested in her career as does her husband (McKay, 2008, ¶ 1). Putting away traditional role models of women as caregivers and men as bread winners, the decision to be the at-home parent is often based on which parent earns more money (McKay, ¶ 2). Other factors are based on who has the better health insurance policy, who stands to lose more by taking time off from their career, who is more flexible with their hours, and who can work from home (McKay). If this falls upon the father then he becomes the stay-at-home dad also known in society as fulltime father, Mr. Mom, or the domestic husband.
The most basic skill of being a stay-at-home dad (SAHD) is the care and welfare of the child. For example, one experience of a stay-at-home dad, a former Capitol Hill staffer and Yale graduate, expressed his primary concentration is in nurturing his children before house chores (Jayson, 2005, ¶ 2). Since there are limited stay-at-home male role models, this becomes a new life role for many men. Therefore, learning a new life role takes on unwanted stress.
The downfall of being a SAHD is the loneliness and isolation, loss of work peers, loss of career, loss of pay and having to catch up with peers when reentering the workforce. Another aspect is the loss of time for self. Because most men don’t understand the work involved in being a stay-at-home dad, they assume the dad has plenty of time on his hand as noted by Nunez experience as a stay at home dad (Bloom, 2007). Although the life role of a stay-at-home dad can be challenging the rewards are endless.
The stay-at-home dad life role is rewarding in the emotional life of the child and the parents. The values of the family are handed directly to the child without the concerns of a third party caregiver and the father has a greater impact as a male role model by being available to the child during the infant to preschool years. The healthy bonding between father and child are critical for the cognitive development of the child. The father is able to nurture the baby as she becomes aware of her surroundings. Gratification in this life role comes from the ability to be present for the child’s “firsts.” In learning this new life role men seek knowledge from accessing the internet, stay-at-home dad blog sites. After being a stay-at-home dad for the first years of a child’s life, most dads begin to reenter the workforce. Some dads make the transition to returning to school in order to have a better career than before.

Vini