SAHD

For the past 6+ months, my husband has been a stay-at-home-dad (SAHD) with great benefits. We still bring London to the nanny five days a week and a wonderful woman cleans our home once a week. To give him credit, he is starting a new business that is growing quickly. Still, everyone has to make sacrifices to follow their dreams -- well, almost everyone -- and he seemed unable to commit to either starting a business that will grow to be his primary career or keeping it as a side "hobby" and working a job with a regular paycheck. Either way, we can't afford for him not to work and continue to pay for nanny & cleaning lady.

Finally, just this afternoon, he decided to pursue his business full-time which would mean that he'd be a SAHD full-time too. (His business is web based and can be managed any time of the day.) I think his biggest challenge in making the decision was that he was too proud to be a SAHD. Think you'd ever hear a woman say that? I'm too proud to stay home and raise my children. No way!

Warning: about to get on my soap box.

While I'd love to spend much, much more time with my son, I don't know that my son would be best served if I were a SAHM. When I'm home too long, I feel like I have to accomplish "things" but when I only have a few hours, spending time with him is my most important, and often only, accomplishment.

Back to the soap box.

How is it that we -- my husband and I -- are both frowned upon by a good part of society. I'm selfish because I work outside the home and my husband is a "failure" because he stays home. I realize that this backwards Cleaver family is becoming more and more popular, but do people really accept it? Will anyone ever see a dad grocery shopping with his kids on a Tuesday afternoon and think that he's successful? Or see a mom picking up her toddler from preschool in a business suit and think that she always puts her child first?

So, hey, suburbs! Get ready for an nontraditional family to join your ranks!

Comments

[Elaine]

You know, we did this same thing when my first daughter was 14 months old. MAN was it hard to deal with the perceptions around us. I went back to work full time because that was what I needed at that point in our life and luckily we had the resources to make my husband staying at home a reality. It was really pretty awesome, though. I'm the stay at home parent again (we had another child) and never, not once has he questioned what I do all day. He gets it. Totally. And I get the frustrations and issues around working full time and missing your kids. It's done wonders for our marriage.

I love seeing more of us making this choice. And I love the bond my daughter shares with her dad. It's truly the most awesome thing I could have ever hoped for.