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I did two tours (1+ year each) as a SAHD and, though it was crazy difficult and I was glad to get back to working again, I'm glad I did it and my kids still remembered the times I spent with them. I'd do it again if someone would support me.
Would there be women actually fine with supporting a stay-at-home dad though? It seems like women can get supported themselves, as opposed to them supporting the men, just as in dating where he must pay for the dates to continue. I would not mind at all a little stint where I was the stay-at-home dad, just so I can get a little vacation from my job, but would a woman actually agree to this arrangement?
I've had women flip out at me when I asked her to pay dutch or the whole FOURTH date (after I paid for the first three), so I'd imagine the relationship would be kiboshed the second I wanted to stay at home while she worked. Do women actually exist that would be fine with their husband staying at home if the situation called for it in short stints?
Last edited by AbsolutePwnage; 06-11-2013 at 07:08 PM..
There's a sahd group in my neighborhood that play poker at the coffee shop while their kids play. It looks like they have a good time even if they don't seem supervise their kids especially well (toddlers).
But I also know a sahd who's wife is a doctor and he spends a lot of time hitting on SAHMs at the park.
Would there be women actually fine with supporting a stay-at-home dad though?
Yup.
In fact, when we first moved here, I was the first one to find a job. We had actually planned, once that happened (only about two weeks in), for my husband to be the SAHD depending upon how things worked out on my job (temp to perm, my manager was wild about me and selling me to her boss at the time).
During the month that this went on, I would come home every single day to my husband with our almost 2-year-old in his lap, absolutely nothing done in the house, literally not a thing, and my son not having eaten because it was "so hard to watch a child all day!" He literally (my DH) had rings under his eyes and his face was pale, I was actually scared for him. However, he said it was "rewarding" to be with our DS and I knew the two had a good thing going. I would have done it indefinitely and in fact planned on it at the time. Or, if he had found daycare, we could have both worked but that would have been his choice. By that time I'd been working outside the home for almost two decades and it was all second hat for me.
Unfortunately, in retrospect I do see what a disaster it was all becoming, but not because I didn't support DH in staying home. I did, 100%. But I would come home from work and then do the housework, LOL. And I would get up with our DS in the mornings and at nighttime to give DH more of a break because I did feel it was that hard work to watch a child full-time (I never had except on maternity leave). What a putz I am.
Aaaaaaaaaanyway. That's neither here nor there. He found a job that paid double what mine was paying, he hadn't managed to find daycare yet ("too busy all day with the baby"), he wanted me to while I was on my job (???), and just at that time we were really starting to discover how serious our son's special needs were so it was apparent that one of us would have to stay home. So I had to ditch my job and disappoint my boss and take the reins at home.
My husband today says, "If I had to stay at home all day and do all that, I'd kill myself."
Moral of the story: it's not for everyone.
Moral of my previous story about my uncle: it IS for some dads and they do spectacularly out of it and get a lot of it.
My bottom line: even with coming home from work and having to do all the housework, I'd have been glad for my DH to remain a SAHD because I really saw their relationship developing and because, I don't know, it just didn't matter to me which of us stayed home. It was never a gender thing.
Oh! I just thought of another SAHD, in my sons' school district. This guy is truly Superdad. He is wonderful with his kids. They're always clean, the homework is always done and they have extracurricular activities.
I don't know if he does the housework, etc., I never actually asked him that. Kind of funny how when it's a SAHM it's just assumed that all the housework is just part and parcel but that we don't automatically assume that with SAHDs.
He is currently getting divorced but not because of that. So he may be going back to work, I don't know. He has been a SAHD for I guess...six years now? Seven?
He does a wonderful job and I know at least at one time his soon to be ex-wife supported him in it 100%.
If I had a wife and kids and she earned way more than me then I'd be a SAHD too. I wouldn't mind it at all.
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