Cultural Myths

[Anonymous]

Hello all SAHDs. I am an undergraduate student at the University of Iowa. I am doing a paper on the cultural myths that mostly women can be the ones to stay at home and take care of the kids. I am interesting in any information you would be able to give me pretaining to how being a SAHD has effected your life. What kind of reactions do you get when you tell people you are a SAHD? What kind of barriers, if any, have you had to overcome? How common are SAHDs? What made you decide to be a SAHD? Any other information you would be able to give me would be greatly appriciated. Thank you for your time.

[mjknapp]

Nice, finally someone posted in this topic. I was beginning to worry Don.......lol

Hi BigCee04, What you said about it being a myth for women to be the stay at home parent is somewhat, but not all true. It is true that women bring things into a childs life that men can't, like emotion, it is a man's nature to hide emotion, and I am guilty of it, the hardest part of me being a stay at home dad, is trying to figure out waht and how to teach the children the stuff that a woman can teach them. How can I teach them that it is allright to show emotion, when my entire life I was told by my dad that men don't cry, that we are joists that hold our families together. I beleive that with all my heart that we as men need to be strong all the time, that we are there for our family to depend on, to know that if something goes wrong, that I will fix it. I need to teach my son that, but my daughter, how am I to teach her the things that her mother could teach her, that is the most challenging part of being a stay at home dad. But the challenging part has it's rewards also, for all the questions that I have on how to raise a girl into a woman, there is only one person that I can go to with those questions, and that is my wife. The qusetions I ask her on a daily basis, and the answers she give me, well it brings us closer together, makes me understand her that much more. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying I have figured her out, but I have a better understanding about women, and a three year old taught me that. Who would have guessed......lol

When I told my family and my inlaws about me staying home, all I got is "well, as soon as you can you are going back to work right" Some of them still ask me that, and sometimes I want to go back to work, as I get tired of the questions, but I love my kids so much, and wouldnt be half the man I am without them, so I stay home, read stories, try to teach them the basics of life, and try to learn as much as I can everyday.

How common is stay at home dads??????

Well we have over 70 members now, and this forum in the style it is in now, has been up and running since may, so I would say there are more of us out there than a person would think.

The reason I am a stay at home dad is probably different from the others, but we all have our own stories right.

My son was born with complications, he started having seizures within 5 hours after he was born, it wasnt diagnosed right away, but he ended up in a children's hospital in Philly, when he was discharged my wife stayed at home with him until she had to go back to work after maternity leave,

all of our insurance was through her job, and if she quit we would lose insurance, and we still didnt have a prognosis on Tyler's medical condition, so we decided that I would stay at home with him, as we didnt want a daycare caring for him if he had another seizure. Well, I have been home ever since, he will be a year old in december.

Thanks for finally posting in this category, I have been waiting to reply to such a question....

[Remington]

Wow, where to begin?? With such a broad question it may be tough to pinpoint it all for myself. Louis and Mike really nailed a few things that are really quite common for most of us.

I would have to agree that one of the biggest challenges is finding a way to fill the void of the nurturer. When my kids fall down and get a "boo-boo" I tend to want to say, "come on... get up.. your fine..." When thinking about it that is not much for nurturing and being sensitive. So I have to force myself to really feel for them and kiss the "boo-boo" and hold them if they are crying.

When it comes to finances it is really hard for me to have no control and count on my wife to bring it all in. It is like sitting in the front passenger seat while your wife is driving. You know you will make it but you push your foot down on the floorboard as if you are helping them put on the brakes. Or you look behind you when they back up to give her another pair of eyes.

It is the same feeling as a SAHD. I go through all the financial rollercoaster rides but have no control over steering or speed.

Some of the good things I have found is you are in control of the day. You can bang out a routine and set it up the best way. You are the manager and you need to run the family and kids the best way. Playtime, to lunch, to naps, to movies, to snacks, to outdoor trips and adventures, to the park, etc... These are all the things you can control and manage. Kids have little sense of time and so providing them with an agenda is important.

Also I have found less stress when it comes to answering to a boss, other than the wife... lol

I am my own boss.

I get a range of responses when I tell people what I do. It used to bother me but I have found it all depends on what is in my voice and how I say it that triggers certain responses. I used to try to hide it and peopel could read right through it and it actually leaves you feeling silly. Now that I am proud of what I do my reactions are better. I talk highly of my kids and my family and people seem to be more happy for me and think the idea is great.

But I still get a lot of issues, especially with my pastor. He thinks men should not be at home and beleives I should be the one working and my wife staying home, even though she makes about 5 times as much as I made prior to this. I find that actually irresponsible. I think we need to do what is best for the family and what works at the time.

Most people beleive that the person that makes the most money has more power. I guess it may seem that way if your life revolves around money, but there are other more important things in life.

The best thing in the world that is better than a raise or a promotion is when you turn out your kid's light and kiss them on the forehead just before bed and they look you in the eye and they say, "I love you daddy."

There is nothing more important in your life than that right there.

[SAHF]

I am interesting in any information you would be able to give me pretaining to how being a SAHD has effected your life.

Well this is a pretty easy question.

Being a SAHD has effected the way I think about life and who is really raising your children. I have less stress and more energy to do the simple things in life that make my kids smile.

It has also effected the way I think about the SAHMs out there. I once thought they were just lazy and whinned too much about a job that seemed pretty easy. Boy was I wrong! :oops:

What kind of reactions do you get when you tell people you are a SAHD?

At the word GO....I get differnet reations from differnet sexs.

Women: "You have the kids today?"
Men: "Talk about a sweet deal. You get to sleep all day and do nothing."

I get more looks from women who believe that men should be working as well and think it as some sort of abuse that I am at home while the wife is out working.

The mom groups out there are REAL hesitant to have a MAN in their group or even consider us (SAHD) as real parents that can change diapers and make dinner.

The men just think it is all gravey until I tell them what happens all day. The more men that ask the question...what do you do for a living...the more they are surprised and are amazed that it is such hard work.

I had one gentleman tell me that he did not know it was not all cherries and had better get his wife some flowers and an apology card.

What kind of barriers, if any, have you had to overcome?

Part-time jobs are the hardest to come by when they ask you your job for the last xxx time frame. Sometimes they think you are just screwing round on your resume.

The Mommy groups do not accept you in most cases and are REALLY stand off-ish. Example...this past Summer, I took my kids to the movies on Tuesday and Wednesday during the "family time" (theater let kids and parents in free for a couple of months).

There were mom groups there and I tried to strike up a conversation or two about the group and how I can participate so I can setup some play dates for my kids. OMG...I must have had mustard or something growing out of my head.

Most reations are the same... :wink: sure you are a SAHD..oh yeah sure! :wink:

How common are SAHDs?

Outside of the group we have on this site, great bunch of guys btw, I have no idea if there are anymore out there or at least in the Orlando, FL area.

I am going to be putting together a Play group for this area with a website outlining everything that I will be doing (until I can find members). lol

Maybe then I can see how many more there are of us out there!

What made you decide to be a SAHD?

Well...by trade I am an Computer Network Engineer with 10 years under my belt. The last company I worked for decided that it was time to close its doors. Because of that, my wife decided that I do not have to work and it would be better for all of us that I stay home and raise our kids.

Any other information you would be able to give me would be greatly appriciated.

SAHDs are a growing and proud breed of men. We come from all walks of life and have the same problems that women do when they stay at home.

Most, not all, most people look at us a lazy but we are working hard at making our kids better than the kids down the street that goes to daycare and is being taught by go only knows.

The moms in my life (mom and mom-inlaw) both do not agree with me being a SAHD and it makes for a short lived talk on the phone. Most dads that work hard in the workforce envy us and would love the chance to do what we do.

I have fun being a SAHD. When I fill out an application for the doctor, insurance, etc..I put my wife/kids as my employer and my job title as SAHD. The best part of that is, it is a GREAT ice breaker and they get a laugh.

The only REAL challenge out there is finding some way of supplimenting extra income for the household. Some of the guys here have a small home business and some do not. I for one am struggling at getting my company off the ground.

Other than the little things, I would not want it any other way! If you have more questions or direct questions please do not hesitate to contact me. I think more people need to see us out there!

Don

[Anonymous]

Thank you very much to all of you guys for your responses. It will greatly help in preparing my speech. It was also very interesting to find out the "in's and out's", I guess you could say, of being a SAHD. I really enjoyed reading everyone's responses, and not just in a homework kind of way. It was fun to have a kind of window into a part of the work force you don't usually see to often, and I hope my audience will think that as well. I will be giving them the URL for this web site and forum so that they can come on here and read everyone's stories more in detail than I will be able to give them in my speech. Anyway, I really appreciate the time everyone took out for these posts. Thank you.

[mjknapp]

Thank you very much to all of you guys for your responses. It will greatly help in preparing my speech. It was also very interesting to find out the "in's and out's", I guess you could say, of being a SAHD. I really enjoyed reading everyone's responses, and not just in a homework kind of way. It was fun to have a kind of window into a part of the work force you don't usually see to often, and I hope my audience will think that as well. I will be giving them the URL for this web site and forum so that they can come on here and read everyone's stories more in detail than I will be able to give them in my speech. Anyway, I really appreciate the time everyone took out for these posts. Thank you.

Oh no, we are gonna get busted, hurry Don, erase all the incriminating posts.....lol

[Don-Dad]

Dang it, not enough time in the day to erase the incriminating posts. I better get to work, hehe.

[SAHF]

:lol:

[tt3]

Boy if you erased all the incriminating ones, I'd be back down to 20 posts! :lol:

[SAHF]

Boy if you erased all the incriminating ones, I'd be back down to 20 posts! :lol:

[-X :lol:

He should bring you down some anyways.. you are making us look bad! :wink:

[Remington]

Yea slow down would ya?

You trying to get me fired? :lol:

[Anonymous]

Hello all SAHDs. I am an undergraduate student at the University of Iowa. I am doing a paper on the cultural myths that mostly women can be the ones to stay at home and take care of the kids. I am interesting in any information you would be able to give me pretaining to how being a SAHD has effected your life. What kind of reactions do you get when you tell people you are a SAHD? What kind of barriers, if any, have you had to overcome? How common are SAHDs? What made you decide to be a SAHD? Any other information you would be able to give me would be greatly appriciated. Thank you for your time.

I imagine this is a dollar late and a day short (do I have those in the right order?), but I was a SAHD for about 10 years, and now my kids are in middle school so I have been back at the daily grind for a few years now..or I should say TRYING to be back at it.

That is probably the biggest way being a SAHD has affected MY life and will affect the lives of all these young guys in here: their careers, when they finally resume them, are very likely going to suffer.

Socially, they will be looked down upon, regardless of what all the magazine articles and movies and books say. They will be looked at a weak and wussy by other men (too afraid to do what they are doing) and as interlopers by many/most women, bitter that they did not GET to stay at home, or furious that a...a MAN is doing this job as well or in many cases better--that was certainly the case in my family--than a woman.

These two issues will mesh when many of these guys find it's time to re-enter the workforce. There's lots written out there, and whole college depts. set up to handle WOMEN rejoining the workforce after staying at home for years, but since so few SAHDs exist, the market is not there for such a resource for us. But let me tell you what these guys are likely to encounter when they go a'job huntin' in a few years.

If you are honest, and tell prospective employers what you were doing for all those years you were AWOL, this is the (general) response you will get:

Female bosses will detest you and find you a threat. They already feel guilty for not being home with their own kids (who are likely in some daycare factory), furious at their own either absent male partner for not being there, or at their typical male partner for being there but just adding to her workload (the so-called "2nd shift"). You will represent all they believe they "could not" (actually, they CHOSE not) have. And, since you will be glowing about just coming off 5 or 10 or even 18 years of SAHD duty, they will be doubly infuriated by your confidence. THEIR husband couldn't figure out which side of the diaper goes "up" and the only time he's ever used the oven was to bake the new finish onto a car part.

Male bosses with fear and loathe you. You are a species of creature they have probably NEVER encountered. They have no idea how to talk to you. You may be able to recite the Yankee's roster from 1952 to present in your sleep, you may have been a US Army Ranger who saw combat on three continents, you may be a black belt in Judo, you may find it refreshing to hoist the big block out of your 75 Jimmy before breakfast, but he will see you as a namby-pamby girly-man who "couldn't cut it" in the he-man world of work, and decided to be a mommy instead. Awww, ain't that cute? This fear will cause him to doubt your abilities and even to possibly loathe you as fear often causes in us humans.

For both, you are going to have the uphill battle of DEFENDING your having been a SAHD, rather than working. ANY reason you give will be met with doubt, or outright disbelief and often hostility. Well, why couldn't SHE stay home? Why didn't you just put them in daycare like the rest of us do? What's wrong with you!?

Not an easy row to hoe.

I suggest to every SAHD that the day they start being a SAHD, they also start figuring out how they are going to work...for themselves.

T.

[Anonymous]

Wow, where to begin?? With such a broad question it may be tough to pinpoint it all for myself. Louis and Mike really nailed a few things that are really quite common for most of us.

I would have to agree that one of the biggest challenges is finding a way to fill the void of the nurturer. When my kids fall down and get a "boo-boo" I tend to want to say, "come on... get up.. your fine..." When thinking about it that is not much for nurturing and being sensitive. So I have to force myself to really feel for them and kiss the "boo-boo" and hold them if they are crying.

When it comes to finances it is really hard for me to have no control and count on my wife to bring it all in. It is like sitting in the front passenger seat while your wife is driving. You know you will make it but you push your foot down on the floorboard as if you are helping them put on the brakes. Or you look behind you when they back up to give her another pair of eyes.

It is the same feeling as a SAHD. I go through all the financial rollercoaster rides but have no control over steering or speed.

Some of the good things I have found is you are in control of the day. You can bang out a routine and set it up the best way. You are the manager and you need to run the family and kids the best way. Playtime, to lunch, to naps, to movies, to snacks, to outdoor trips and adventures, to the park, etc... These are all the things you can control and manage. Kids have little sense of time and so providing them with an agenda is important.

Also I have found less stress when it comes to answering to a boss, other than the wife... lol

I am my own boss.

I get a range of responses when I tell people what I do. It used to bother me but I have found it all depends on what is in my voice and how I say it that triggers certain responses. I used to try to hide it and peopel could read right through it and it actually leaves you feeling silly. Now that I am proud of what I do my reactions are better. I talk highly of my kids and my family and people seem to be more happy for me and think the idea is great.

But I still get a lot of issues, especially with my pastor. He thinks men should not be at home and beleives I should be the one working and my wife staying home, even though she makes about 5 times as much as I made prior to this. I find that actually irresponsible. I think we need to do what is best for the family and what works at the time.

Most people beleive that the person that makes the most money has more power. I guess it may seem that way if your life revolves around money, but there are other more important things in life.

The best thing in the world that is better than a raise or a promotion is when you turn out your kid's light and kiss them on the forehead just before bed and they look you in the eye and they say, "I love you daddy."

There is nothing more important in your life than that right there.

I am by no means an expert, but I am looking at SAHDism from the far side now, and can look back and nod (sagely, I hope!) at some of the things I see in this response.

1. Men, whether they are SAHD or the breadwinner, or completly absent react entirely differently to boo-boos than do women. And rightly so. Men DO tend to tell their kids to get up, get over it and get on with life. This is not the horror that some women like to pretend it is, especially for sons. I only raised daughters, but I treated them the same way. Basically, you see to the injury, make sure it's not an opened artery, apply a bandaid, a kiss on the head, a "it's just a little cut, nothing to be worried about," and a gentle swat to head them back to the play area where they will completly forget about it before you've groaned and creaked your way back up to the full, upright position. Women tend to go all Chicken Little over little cuts and scrpes, frightening the child, themselves and sometimes the man. Once, when our youngest got a thread in the foot of her footie PJs wrapped around her toe overnight and it cut off the circulation, as my wife tells it now "I knew it was something to worry about when he (me) was worried." It's true. It took me a while to convince her that kids fall down go boom. A lot. And that you can't rush them to the hospital everytime they scrape their knee or even get a blackeye from a baseball.

2. Like many others in here, it seems, the "choice" was thrust upon me when I and a long-time job in a limited market parted ways. My wife was indeed able to make twice what I could starting over someplace, so I stayed home. Whether we like it, or like to admit it or not, the fact of the matter is, in most families, he/she who brings home the bacon gets to decide whether that bacon will go onto sandwhiches or next to eggs over easy. We men do not, as a rule like "giving up" that power. It feels odd and scary to us. Some women don't like HAVING that power. But in our culture, with not-so-defined male/female roles vis a vis bringing home the bacon, we have to find balance. It would be nice if we could do what all the magazines say and sit down and have a face-to-face about finainces and income and lay it all out on the table, but many of us were raised to believe such issues were never discusses aloud and that in fact, the "man" of the house handles all that, often with no input whatsoever from the little lady. Many of our fathers operated this way. I know a guy who died, and the FBI showed up at his funeral. His wife had no idea he was a thug. These are hardwired responses in male/female roles that have been turned topsy turvy in our culture, and magnified when you are a SAHD family.

3. Responses. I was often infuriated by the "oh, babysitting today!?" chirps from absolute strangers. My reply was always a surly, "I'm their dad, not their babysitter. I don't get paid that well." Perhaps a bit curt, but that's the kinda hairpin I am. The more difficult encounters were always with people from HER work at social events. "Oh, your um, her husband...um, yeah, the um, guy who uh, yeah, who stays at home with her kids."

Um, yeah. I stayed home with MY kids, too! Funny how that worked out.

Personally, I never had any problem with telling anyone I could corner about how I was blessed enough to be able to wake up with, have breakfast, lunch and dinner with, and in fact share the entire day every day with these wonderful little miracles. I would give everything I own or ever will own to do a Groundhog Day (the Bill Murray movie?) on my life when my kids were about 7 and 8. I could solve world hunger, put an end to war, and build a colony on Mars and it would not hold a feather in my heart to what I did with my kids as their daddy.

However, my WIFE was a different story. She had all kinds of stories about what her husband "was." My favorite (since I did dabble) was that I was a "writer." Uh, huh. I explained to her oh, conservatively, may 6 trillion times that a professional writer is um well, PAID for what he writes. Coming from a sort of "glamorous" profession into one where diapers and binkies were the tools of my trade, I can see now how this felt to her, but it ground my gears back in the day.

At the end of the day, literally, as Remington points out, what is more important? That butterfly kiss from your child and the soft, loving "goodnight," or having the corner office.

We who have been through it or are going through it know the answer. And we can pity those who never will know.

T