More Parenting for the Buck
If stay-at-home dads can endure the occasional affronts and the lifestyle changes, though, there may be clear benefits for their kids. One perk we may not realize: “If there’s a choice between the mom or the dad staying at home, the child will typically end up with more parental attention when Dad stays home,” says Williams. Working dads with stay-at-home wives tend to work longer hours and more easily relinquish parenting responsibilities than do working moms with at-home husbands, she says. “Generally, these working mothers are not willing to let go of their parental role to the same extent as ‘breadwinner fathers.’ They stay involved with their kids.”
“Our kids grew up knowing that both Dad and Mom would help them,” says Julia Moore forty-four, of Indianapolis, who works for an architecture and interiors firm. Her husband, Brian, forty-eight, a potter, is at home with their kids, now teenagers. “I’m no less a good mom because Brian stayed home with the kids.”
As proud as working moms are of their commitment to their families, many at-home dads take special pride in following a different path than their own fathers chose. “I watched my father work himself into an early grave,” says Mark. “As a result, he didn’t spend that much time with his kids. I thought, ‘Is that what I want?’ My identity as a person isn’t wrapped up in what I do. I watched my father do that. That’s what led me to say, ‘I’ll stay home with the kids.’”
At the same time, some working moms are acutely aware that their relationships with their children are not unlike the relationships they had with their fathers. “When I was growing up, my dad would come in the door and we’d all scream, ‘Dad!’ and my mom would say, ‘What am I, chopped liver?’” says forty-seven-year-old Liz Ryan of Boulder, CO, founder of the online business community WorldWIT, whose husband stays at home with their five children, ages four to thirteen. “But she was with us all day, so she wasn’t as exciting. It’s the same thing in reverse for my kids. I walk in the door, and it’s ‘Mommy!’”
By Gary Drevitch
Read Part II of The New Dad
