I was blown away by the many great comments on yesterday’s post on stay at home dads.
Across my platforms I had a lot of feedback, and i was going to write something else today, but several themes kept emerging from the comments, so I thought we could talk about it a little more.
A few women said that they would hate the idea of a stay-at-home dad, because it would make him effeminate and would emasculate him and they’d lose respect and attraction for him, but that was definitely the minority.
I’ll start with this great story that encapsulates so much of what goes into decisions that couples make:
Following fertility struggles, when I finally got pregnant, my husband floated the idea of him staying home with the kids instead of me. I am the Mom, I just assumed I would stay home! But his logic was sound:
– I’m a teacher, which is an amazing job for a parent. I’m home for a year with the baby on maternity leave, I’m home every evening and weekend, I can pick them up from school, and continue working after they are in bed.
– He is a paramedic, which is a high stress, dangerous job that requires shift work and an incredible tax on mental health
– I hate laundry, cleaning, etc
– He enjoys the instant gratification of ‘it wasn’t clean and now it is’.
– I need grown up interaction to be a balanced human
– He is quite content to enjoy quiet
– when I had our first, he was making more money, but we knew that would shift as I had more earning potential.
– there was MUCH higher likelihood he would get hurt at work than me, and if we lost his income, it would take years for me to get back into teaching
– my pension is way better
So I took the 8 months off with my son, and the first year with my daughter. He got better parental leave than I did, so he took his leave as well to bridge the rest of the year home with our son. I still breastfed both kids for a year, and exclusively bf both for 6 months.
– he dropped to part time and worked Friday nights only for a while.
– Now that the kiddos are older he works more, but still part time so there can always be someone home with them.
– He gets to go on field trips, and be one of the “hot lunch ladies” at their school.
– he took our daughter for a manicure this week. When she was little, he took her to the hairdressers for a lesson on doing little girl hair, which they all thought was adorable.
– we both cook
– he still does the stereotypical gender role things: car repair, garbage, lawn care, BBQ-ing, etc. I do Christmas, birthdays, homework, vacation planning, etc.
– his buddies are all jealous of him. He gets play time, nap time, cuddle time, etc.
Here’s the thing: we are both leaning into the skills that God has blessed us with, and that positively impacts our children. They get a Dad who is not burnt out, mentally healthier, loves to engage with them. They get a Mom who is demonstrating how you can have a career and a family, who also has to make sacrifices to be a good Mom, but has an amazing support system allowing her to learn and thrive in her career.
Now, there is an element in her story that many people brought up: It makes sense for the woman to stay at home in the beginning.
Only women can breastfeed!
As a Canadian, we easily do what the couple here did–have the wife take a year long maternity leave first, and then have the husband stay home after that. We get a full year of maternity leave (it can be stretched out to 18 months if you choose, but the money doesn’t change; it’s just stretched out). In addition, dads can take up to 40 weeks of paternity leave (though together they can’t each take it). Many couples have her take 9 months, and then he tops up an extra 3 months.
As an aside, I just have to say, when I read about American maternity leave policy only getting 2 weeks, or 6 weeks, or even being thrilled with 12 weeks I get so, so sad. I seriously tear up and can’t handle it. At 12 weeks Rebecca wasn’t even healed yet from the delivery. The baby still isn’t sleeping through the night. To me, proper maternity leave is a human rights issue. We’ve had year long maternity leave in Canada since before Rebecca was born (I took a year off of my Master’s program then), and I know Europe and the UK have similar programs. I honestly feel so, so badly for American moms. I honestly can’t imagine. I just can’t.
And there’s another element too: they were able to afford for the dad to stay at home.
This couple both had well paying jobs, so it worked. I understand that this isn’t the case for everyone, and many of you need two full-time incomes. This post isn’t meant as a judgment on that, but rather a plea that we allow people to do what works for their family, rather than trying to slot everyone into one mold.
In fact, as we shared in The Great Sex Rescue, we found that ACTING OUT traditional gender roles did not impact marital satisfaction one way or the other. But as soon as you believed that gender roles were assigned by God, bad things start to happen. So it’s not that traditional gender roles are wrong, but feeling as if there is only one way to do family and get God’s approval does hurt people.
That’s something else that came up in the comments: People enjoyed finding creative solutions to work/child care:
My husband was stay at home dad for several years. He was not at all emasculated or threatened by me earning $ for our family. He is by and large a very blokey kind of guy. It was the best thing ever for us. He brought a different element to our home, bonded with our kids, taught them to be adventurous. He also learnt about the mental load of running the house, became a far better partner, and gained lots of respect from me and our kids. Allowing me to advance my career for that few years while he explored new options without the burden of just earning an income have lead us both to a place where I can work in a fantastic part time job and he has a new full time job he would never have been able to get without those years of SAHD. The only down side we found was judgement from some church friends who assumed the dynamic we had was “unbiblical” and emasculating….
My dad was a cop and my mom a doctor. It made sense for dad to stay home with me when I was little, and he did a great job. I’m very thankful for those years with him. And even more thankful that he was secure enough in himself and his relationship with Mom to be able to make that decision for our family. He has always been our protector and provider, even when it wasn’t by producing income.
The best scenario I saw was a married couple I’m friends with. she took one year off, then her husband took one year off, then they both dropped to part time. I was blown away by this, which saddened me, coz it shouldn’t be that mindblowing.
In some ways this last scenario is what Rebecca (my daughter who is often on the Bare Marriage podcast with me and who was co-author of The Great Sex Rescue) and her husband Connor plan on doing: everyone working part-time so that they both can enjoy time with the kids.
Right now Connor is mostly working full-time for me (he’s working on a huge migration for the blog when we rebrand soon) and Rebecca is home with Alex. But Rebecca and I (and Joanna, our other co-author) have a book deadline of September 1 for our moms of daughters manuscript. So Connor’s been switching his work hours so he still works 8 hours a day but he doesn’t start until 10 or so, and he gets the first few hours with Alex. And he says he’s so much happier starting the day with his son.
When you can juggle something like that, it’s great! When Katie was a year old and Rebecca was 3 1/2 Keith finished his residency in pediatrics, but we were waiting for a job to open up in his home town. So for six months we each worked part-time. I earned the same as him because I was doing database programming, and those six months were some of the most fun of our lives. We were each doing important and challenging work, but we were also each getting time with the children. And the girls loved it.
Unfortunately, all too many churches don’t acknowledge that the stereotypical way of doing family is not the only one.
It’s clear that most people believe that doing what works for you as a family is best. But if churches don’t start acknowledging that this is a good thing, then more and more couples will head for the door, feeling unwelcome.
My husband has been the one cooking, cleaning, and doing the majority of care for our toddler since he lost his job shortly after she was born. And I am the breadwinner with the career job for now. He’s not felt that he fits in at churches, since stay at home dad issues are never addressed and few other men are in that position. He’s been wanting stay at home dads to be acknowledged & affirmed at our church for a long time.
One of my closest friends has this arrangement – she is the primary breadwinner, and he stays home with the kids. He’s a licensed MFT who had his own practice – but this choice made the most sense financially and for other reasons for them, and both of them are happy with this arrangement, particularly while their kids are very young. When they first made this decision it was quite unusual for our church community – but most people were generally supportive. However, they did also have multiple people confront them to say they were not making a “biblical decision” and express concerns about her husband. So apparently those people would not only agree that having a stay at home dad isn’t as good as having a stay at home mom – but would further suggest that God doesn’t approve of situations with stay at home dads.
This is a side issue – but I’m honestly so tired of people using the word “biblical” in front of nouns (biblical womanhood/manhood/decisions, etc.). In my experience this is primarily a way for people to say that their opinions are God’s opinions, and therefore disagreeing with them/their interpretation is disagreeing with God. It’s manipulative and in some cases spiritually abusive, and I would love to see that language dropped out of Christian vernacular altogether.
The reason I walked away from my old evangelical church was because my husband ended up being a stay-at-home dad. When we got engaged, my pastor called us into to talk to him and said he had concerns, one of which was that my husband didn’t seem career oriented and wasn’t in a place to provide for a family, in his opinion. He said that while there’s “nothing wrong” with a man staying home with children, it’s not truly God’s path.
Fast forward 3 years later when we had our first child, and both were sort of in between careers. It was terrifying, but I started praying. I used to pray specifically for my husband to find a job, but then I switch to praying that God would provide for us. When my son was 6 weeks old my old boss called me and offered me one of two full-time positions available in that workplace.
I don’t need a paradigm of conformity to tell me I’m doing God’s will. My husband has been an amazing father, has contributed to the home in more ways than being solely a homemaker, and we’ve been able to make a true partnership. It just irks me that some would see that as a sin.
Side rant; we need to get changing tables in all men’s bathrooms!
It really was interesting reading the comments and seeing how many people were finding creative solutions, or were supportive of stay-at-home dads. The culture is definitely changing.
I just hope that the church as a whole wakes up and starts supporting families, and not just judging them. And remember that “the church” isn’t just elder’s boards and pastors, but us as people. How do we all treat families who find a different work/child care balance than we do? Maybe we should all ask ourselves that!
What do you think? Would a stay-at-home dad be welcome in your social circle? Would a working mom? Let’s talk in the comments!
Sheila Wray Gregoire
Founder of To Love, Honor and Vacuum
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When my kids were young, my husband and I worked very hard for me to stay home with them. Sometimes this meant I worked part-time in the evenings while he was at home. Other times, I worked when they were napping or got up super early in the morning. Occasionally, I was able to stop working all together, but that was rare. Eventually, we got to a place where it made sense for me to work full-time out of the house and for him to work from home. We thought it would be a temporary solution, but this has worked so well for our family that I don’t think we’ll ever go back.
We homeschool our kids. I do most of the planning and curriculum buying and I also teach literature and some bible and history. My husband teaches everything else. He’s arranged his schedule to mostly work outside of the home on the weekends so he can be home with our kids all week.
Our kids are thriving. They have grown much closer to my husband and they all have such a sweet relationship now. He’s become such a supportive husband and father and I can’t believe how lucky I am. He used to be really judgmental about how clean the house was and thought I was lazy if everything wasn’t spotless. Now, he knows the workload of taking care of the kids and home and is now apologetic for how he responded when our kids were little.
He’s still one of the manliest men I know. Actually, I think he’s more manly now than he was before. He works incredibly hard to support our family and will do whatever it takes to make our family thrive. He’s become so much more sexy to me as I’ve seen him step into being an amazing father and husband. He still brings in a paycheck, but honestly, he supports our family in more ways than bringing in money and that wasn’t always the case. Our marriage has improved greatly since we took this step.
Most of our friends come from public school (and often not Christian) families because those families have more involved dads so they don’t think it’s weird to have a dad involved with their kid’s social life. The homeschool community is tough because the dads are rarely involved and there is a weird stigma about a dad being around. I will often do the field trips, etc. so my husband won’t be in an awkward situation. There is definitely room for growth in the Christian community.
In Deuteronomy, it talks about teaching God’s ways to our children. It doesn’t direct this to just women, and it assumes that men will be connecting with their kids throughout the day. Working away from your family is a relatively new construct in human history. Families used to work together to provide for the family and we’ve moved away from that because technology advances changed the way people work. I think it’s important to realize this when talking about work and gender. A lot of what is considered normal now is actually a newer construct.
Sorry to write a book! I have so many thoughts on this subject as I’ve lived both sides of the equation. I love our home and family now and am so grateful that God brought us to a place of true teamwork.
Hi Sheila! One thing you didn’t discuss is the playdate aspect. Let me explain:
When I’m on maternity leave, I have any number of SAHMs to build relationships. And who my kids can have playdates with. My church has a mom’s group Bible Study that has childcare. I need adult interaction so I would plan 1-2 playdates or park meet-ups per week so that both myself and my kids could build friendships. Now that my husband is staying at home these outings are no longer available. My kids don’t see their friends during the week because it’s weird, perhaps inappropriate, for my husband to set-up playdates with my momfriends and their kids. There is no support group for him. Now my husband is much more introverted than me and doesn’t need outings as much as I do. And there are many kids programs that we could put our kids into, but it’s not the same as spending a morning hanging out at a friend’s house. One solution is errand time/babysitting swaps, but even then it’s either my husband texting my girlfriend to set up such things or me being a go-between. Thoughts?
I remember my husband made friends with another SAHD dad in our area when he had his 12 weeks off with our oldest. I also introduced him to the local community centers and playgroups. If there are any programs like that around you, they are great! We were living downtown and didn’t have a lot of space in the apartment, but the YMCA had a Family Development Center with a very low-cost (maybe $50 per year) membership and the local community center ran free programs for parents and tots.
Yes. That it is good for children to see adults having platonic relationships with other adults of the opposite sex.
I saw my father and his father have friendships with women co-workers, neighbors, and/or former schoolmates AND have strong, faithful marriages to their wives.
My husband also has a handful of women friends, mostly from before we met and married, and has given me no reason to doubt his fidelity. I think one of the factors in my trust of my husband (in addition to his character) is having seen opposite-sex platonic relationships modeled by older generations in my family.
“This is a side issue – but I’m honestly so tired of people using the word “biblical” in front of nouns (biblical womanhood/manhood/decisions, etc.). In my experience this is primarily a way for people to say that their opinions are God’s opinions, and therefore disagreeing with them/their interpretation is disagreeing with God. It’s manipulative and in some cases spiritually abusive, and I would love to see that language dropped out of Christian vernacular altogether.”
Whoever it was that wrote this was spot on.
Tiffany,
My thoughts exactly! It is getting so redundant hearing “biblical manhood” and “biblical womanhood.” Titus is the only place I find in the Bible that talks about women being keepers of the home. Yet somehow this verse is turned into a doctrine that a lot of Christians swear to be mandated by God. The Transformed Wife is the perfect example of this doctrine. She thinks that women should not have careers and only be keepers of their homes.
Just to play advocate for the other side of the issue for a moment, even while there’s more of a movement outside of the church for more dad involvement (which is a good thing!) there’s also a lot of judgement from American society as a whole against parents that choose to stay home. There’s just so much pressure to have a career, to have a side hustle, to just be productive. Even within the church, most of the moms I know start working again once their kids are school aged, and though I was never career minded to begin with, it’s especially hard to avoid the sense of judgement at being “just” a stay at home parent outside of the church. It was much easier when I could also add the part about teaching music lessons, until I lost that last year, because at least I was “contributing “. So probably a big part of it is that the church is honestly one of the only places where being a stay at home mom is even acceptable in my culture, and people don’t want to lose that acceptance.
For groups like MOPS, my experience with it was that the social time often involved discussions of pregnancy and childbirth, and I can very easily see how both sides might feel uncomfortable with having a stay at home dad in the room! That being said, we did have a dad who was temporarily the stay at home parent who brought his daughter to our homeschool co-op last year, and he fit in fine. Honestly, it was very helpful to have a guy around to help manage things, since most of our group was boys!
All that to say, maybe there just needs to be less judgment on stay at home parents as a whole, both inside and outside of the church.
Yes, this! Everyone wants to know when I will go back to work (my son is 5 months) and you can see the disapproval when I say I want to be a SAMH and homeschool. Even my Christian family thinks I should work and out any kids in public school.
I didn’t comment yesterday because I mostly just thought about it. But this morning I remembered the 1st sahd I knew. I was 7-9 and he met mom somewhere. His wife was a realtor and he watched their 5(?) Kids. But after knowing them a short time, my parents pulled out of the friendship. He seemed to have a flirtation with the mom’s and my mom didn’t feel comfortable. We only got to play 1 more time, before they never came over again. Looking back, I remembered the wife didn’t look happy/comfortable.
The 2nd sahd I met was very different! Both parents were in the military, but the dad had retired and the mom had a few more years left as nurse. They had 5-7(?) Kids and my parents enjoyed fellowshipping! I think they had to career move to Florida (?)
It was very educational for us to have known both families. One made us feel uncomfortable, the secondade us see that it could work fine! Only if both parents are fully agreed to it.
Earning moneys a skill that benefits the family. When you look at it that way, almost all the nonsense around salaries, who stays home, etc. goes away.
Whose money it? Obviously, the family’s: earning money is for the family, not the person who earns it. It’s a task that needs to be done, not something that someone gets extra privileges for doing.
Is there anything wrong with a working wife or a wife who outearns her husband? Of course not – she’s helping the family.
Do you need / is there anything wrong with a stay at home parent? So long as the tasks of earning money and taking care of the kids are accomplished, of course not.
I have a friend who is a stay-at-home homeschooling mom, however she also has much greater income potential than her husband. I think she really desires to stay home and homeschool her kids and I don’t think her husband is pressuring that decision in any way. However, I also wonder how much of that is motivated by her desire to fulfill “traditional” gender roles. I see where it would make sense for him to stay home with the kids while she earns an income. They really do seem to struggle financially on his income. Her relationship with her sister has been trainwrecked over this situation, I think because her sister sees some of the negative impact these decisions have had on the family and she’s confronted her about it.
All this rambling to say, situations like this cause me to wonder how much harm could be avoided if our church culture was willing to see people as individuals rather than idolize systems and the “right” way to do things.
The emasculating part is what is difficult for many men I think.
You mention a minority but who knows if they have these feelings until they are in a situation like this?
Like what if my wife starts to see me as less of a man with time?
And what are other men going to say? A SAHD in a group I am in said that his wife treated him bad and never wanted to have sex. The solution that some men gave him was that he needed to start working because she didn’t respect him anymore. He was less of a man in her eyes basically. And this is how it often is seen among evangelical men.
No one wants to risk that happening.
So we definitely need a new way to define masculine and what it means to be a man both for men and women.
Completely agree, Anon. This is such a difficult dynamic.
Loved this post and the comments! Even though I’m single (long-time divorcee) and don’t have kids, I love the discussions about this topic. I envy the Canadians because you all get to have one year off for maternity leave and both parents have the option to work part-time.
I agree with the stay-at-home moms who feel comfortable in the church because that is the place where it is acceptable to be a stay-at-home mom. It is true that in secular American society, being a stay-at-home parent is looked down on. I think as a church and society, we need to stop assigning traditional roles according to a person’s gender and just take each situation individually. What works for one family may not work for another family.
As I had mentioned yesterday, I have a female cousin who’s an engineer and makes a lot of money. Rather than putting her boys in day care (which is expensive in the US and can take nearly an entire paycheck for a month’s worth of care), she and her husband agreed that he stay at home with the boys before they’re old enough to go to school. This arrangement works well for them and he does not feel emasculated.
This topic about stay-at-home dads reminds me of popular sitcoms from the 1980’s. On Growing Pains and The Cosby Show, the dads ran their medical practices from home while their wives worked outside the home. On Full House, the girls were raised by their widowed father, uncle, and their dad’s best friend. While the father worked during the day, the other two guys (musician and comedian could work from home) were the main caregivers during the day. Of course, some of these sitcom scenarios are not fully realistic. The point here is that stay-at-home dads are valuable and no less masculine than fathers who work outside the home.
People in general get too judgmental about how other families deal with the work/home balance. You have judgment against families who choose traditional gender roles, and judgment against families who don’t. Whether it’s SAHM, SAHD, or both parents working, or some creative combination, is really nobody else’s business: It’s what works for your family!
Amen to changing tables in men’s restrooms!
Our (now former) church was very big on traditional gender roles. After listening to a video from the pastor extolling the “Biblical” virtues of a man providing an income for his children and a woman providing character development to their children during the formative years, my husband commented a bit angrily, “I am more than just a paycheck!” I also wondered, if character development during the formative years is SOOOOO important, why aren’t more fathers doing it as stay-at-home-dads? (For the record, I think character development is important, I just don’t think the responsibility is limited to mothers).
My parents had a pretty balanced work arrangement. Dad was a teacher (so his schedule matched us kids’ schedule) and mom worked part-time as a nurse. One of my dad’s proudest accomplishments was learning to braid little girls’ hair (four daughters, plenty of practice). His other was earning a black-belt. Man-card still in place? Yup.
As a stay-at-home dad, I thank you for these discussions and all the affirmation offered.
I joke that when I stopped being a philosophy professor to become a stay-at-home dad, I switched to the one job that would cause more awkward conversations in evangelical churches and provide less support from the church than my previous one. We have been a part of a church that actually strongly supported both of my jobs, but since we moved four years ago, have not been successful in finding a similar situation.
I’ve been doing this for five and a half years, and that time includes the birth of two children. So I’ve carried the bottles in the diaper bag (with the thermos of hot water to warm them up when the baby is hungry), I shop for groceries, do the laundry, cook the meals, done the doctor appointments, played on the playground, policed the bus stop, pick up the house, helped with school parties, etc. I treasure the time with my children and wouldn’t trade it for another job. But my present situation is a rather alienating one because I don’t get invited to play dates, I get the suspicious eye at the playground rather than conversation, and it seems to be difficult to make friends.
The statistics you share are encouraging and a valuable reminder, even if it seems like my corner of the world is living in that 38%.
I love this discussion! It’s one my husband and I have had many times. I have much higher earning potential than he does, although I’m not quite yet at a point in my career where I earn more than he does. Right now I’m pregnant and our schedules dovetail well (we both work odd hours) that we’ll trade off childcare, but we’ve planned otherwise that he would stay home. If we could afford it, he would. He will probably only take a week or two off and I’ll take longer, just because of recovery, but as soon as I can go back to work I will, both because of money and because I want to.
I’m almost glad right now that we’re just getting plugged into a local church post-move and all of our friends are non-Christians, because they don’t give me a hard time about childcare at ALL. I always talk up my husband to them and I rarely get surprised faces. We call him the baby whisperer, he’s great with kids, he’d much rather do childcare than I would, and I adore my job. I would go postal on anyone who tried to tell me that I was somehow better for my kid than my husband is. He’s a parent just as much as I am.
If a church explicitly says “only men are allowed to be elders, pastors & teachers” then that church is also implicitly (at least) communicating that men should be the leaders (ie, breadwinners) of the home as well.
Yet another reason why, post-COVID, we are now looking for a new church — one that is explicitly egalitarian and allows female leaders (my husband is our stay at home parent, and it is a very good arrangement for all of us right now!)
My wife and I both cycled as stay at home and or primary care providers for our kids while we worked part time jobs. I say this. You only get ONE chance to raise your kids. DON’T MISS IT!! I am SO grateful for the opportunity and or ability we had to each have our time more slanted towards caring for our kids. We certainly didn’t get rich doing it and yep my wife has been the bread winner in our house more than once and I am amen ok with that for the opportunities it has given me and my wife….and our kids remember it too!
I think every man I’ve talked to who has stayed at home for a time says the same thing–don’t miss it! It’s so true. Those years with the kids are so important.
We’re going through a transition into my husband being the stay-at-home parent right now because I’m starting an awesome new full-time job. It just doesn’t make sense for us to try and prioritize his part-time job and find reliable daycare (an expensive luxury here!) and he says he’s going to enjoy a bit of a slower summer before the oldest starts school. Our church hasn’t been outright against switching up gender roles, but they tend to assume moms with little kids are free during the day and dads are working, so we have confused them a bit. The most supportive and understanding people so far are our friends who are a same-sex couple!
I dont know if there are any anime watchers in this blog, but I just started one called the way of the house husband, and its amazing. Disclaimer* There is some language and anime violence.
It’s about an ex aYakuza chief who becomes a house husband. People look at him like he’s crazy, because he looks like he’s all tatoos and intimidation but then he cooks up amazing food and gets the stains out of peoples laundry. It’s both amazing and hillarious…
When we first found we were pregnant with our son, I was in grad school. The first year of my son’s life was during covid, so we were both home, but my husband was primary caregiver while I worked online for grad school. Then, after graduation, we have started to both work part time and swap off caregiving. It gives us both a chance to be around other adults, while also having time at home. My son goes to day care also for a couple mornings a week so he gets socialization as well while my husband and I work. It really is a great way to have a family. I wouldn’t change a thing. My son feels totally at home with either of us. My husband never has to be given instructions on getting my son to bed or getting breakfast ready, but I still get time where I feel like an adult and get to do things that I love.
That’s so lovely! That sounds a lot like how Rebecca and Connor (my daughter and son-in-law) are doing things too!