“It’s a blessing to share time at home with the kids, and I’m grateful to be home," stay-at-home dad Tom Yager says. "I think fatherhood is a great way for character development.”
Kids color at the kitchen table while a casserole crisps in the oven. The kids look up at a loving parent, who tenderly watches over their work. Just as the clock hits 6:30 p.m., in walks the breadwinner, “Honey, I’m home.” For a growing number of Wisconsin families, the voice of that income-earning spouse is feminine, not masculine. And the loving parent is a stay-at-home dad. In these households, Ward and June Cleaver have swapped roles. But has society forfeited the Leave it to Beaver stereotype?
According to a 2005 study in “Psychology of Women Quarterly,” a majority of people, both male and female, viewed nontraditional families, with stay-at-home fathers and full-time working mothers, more negatively than traditional families, indicating society favors the stereotype.
“I don’t have very much patience for anybody who makes a big deal out of what I do. It’s a little annoying and almost condescending,” says Jon Shemick, a stay-at-home dad of two living in Eau Claire. “But, I get why people do it. There is that stereotype of dads being negligent [of] their responsibilities, which is probably largely based on truth, and that’s very disappointing.”
Many people also still expect mothers to be better parents than fathers, a stereotype that continues into the 21st century. Current pop culture also encourages the ideal housewife and lax father stereotype.
“People probably think that dads wouldn’t do as much of the housework or take care of the kids as much as a mom would,” says 24-year-old Kathryn Hughes of Eau Claire, daughter of a stay-at-home father when she was growing up. “But I don’t think it’s really that different, having a mom or a dad home, because both have to learn what it’s like to take care of kids all day, and both moms and dads have an emotional tie and are attached to their kids.”
Kirk Myhre of Eau Claire, who stays at home with his three kids, says the idea of a stay-at-home father is not “earth-shattering” and says he and his wife, a pediatrician, both believe he actually does a far better job of being home with the kids all day than she would if she were the constant go-to parent.
“She could not stay at home with the kids, and she freely admits that. She would go crazy,” Myhre says. “I hear her saying every once in a while, totally out of the blue, ‘Kirk has the much harder job,’ so I think she’s happy where she is.”
According to Human Development and Family Studies Professor Dave Riley at UW-Madison, no research backs up the stereotypical idea that mothers are more skilled parents than fathers and should be the ones staying home. There are individual differences, attitudes and social skills parents need to consider before assuming the mom should be the one carrying the diaper bag and packing the lunches.
“It does not matter whether God created you with an ‘innie’ or an ‘outtie.’ It is your personality and your love for children that makes you successful or not successful as a parent,” says Jay Van Zeeland, stay-at-home dad living near Green Bay. “But society still thinks the men should be doing the ‘hunting’ and the ‘gathering’ and that the women are the nurturers and the lovers.”
Schemick says the difficulties of being a stay-at-home parent are not related to gender. Balancing time and the kids’ lives, keeping up the household, and doing everything else that comes with the hectic, yet rewarding, job all comes down to the personality of the individual, he says.
“It’s just person to person. I don’t think you can make any broad generalizations about gender,” Shemick says. “I’m not trying to make a statement for men or anything, but at the same time, I think it’s no big deal if a man is the stay-at-home parent.”
Myhre, too, says he thinks the skill of stay-at-home parenting depends upon the actual person taking on the full-time task of organizing, cleaning, running errands, and doing all the other in-between jobs for the household and kids.
[1]Click photo to view gallery of photos of Stay-at-Home Dad Jay Van Zeeland and his family.
“I definitely think it’s a personality thing. First and foremost, you need the personality, the mental frame of mind to do this. If you can’t handle the day-to-day thing of being laid back and going with the flow, it would not be an easy job,” Myhre says. “But, being a stay-at-home dad is still looked at in a peculiar mindset, and I still get that look from people wondering why I do it.”
Whether the mom or the dad is staying home, it is merely valuable to have at least one of the parents be with the kids all day, says stay-at-home dad of two Paul Reid of Eau Claire. Because his children are only three and five years old, family time with the kids and being involved in their lives is what is most important, he says. Simply having a parent stay home with the kids is the key issue, not which one actually attempts to tackle the daily juggling of the dentist appointments, piano lessons, making dinner and cleaning the house.
Hughes says she believes having a stay-at-home parent was important for her younger years because she was able to connect with her father on a deeper level and build a concrete bond that will last for a lifetime. If she had had a steady babysitter or went to a daycare every day as a child, she says she would have developed relationships with those caregivers, but they would not be as valued to her now that she is grown up.
Having a parent take on the stay-at-home role may not be so easy for every family to consider, however. While many parents would like to be with the kids all day every day, their financial status does not allow them the luxury of giving their kids special family and relationship-building time Reid and Hughes consider to be important for young children.
“You have to have some sort of income coming into the house,” Van Zeeland says of his wife’s job. “Love and hugs and kisses, which is my paycheck, is really hard to spend at the grocery store.”
When parents can afford to be with their kids all of the time, how they feel about their job as a stay-at-home mom or dad makes all the difference in the world, Riley says. Whether it is the mother or the father constantly changing the diapers and folding the laundry matters less than his or her attitude about the job. When parents feel fulfilled and happy with their role in the family, the kids benefit more. But when parents feel frustrated and stressed by their stay-at-home job, the kids suffer, he says.
Reid says he believes stay-at-home parenting is rewarding to both the child and the parent. He says his kids get more individualized attention at home rather than being just a number at daycare, and he gets the chance to see their first steps, hear their first words, and be the one to teach them how to ride a bike. While most parents would say they stay home for the sake of their kids, they, too, get gratifying experiences out of the difficult job, he says.
“By far the most rewarding part is the cuddling. The kids come up and they cuddle with me, and in the middle of the night when my kids have a dream and they come in and wake me up and crawl in bed with me,” Van Zeeland says. “And, I’m not trying to take that away from my wife, but when the kids come in, they come to me first. That is beyond rewarding to know that my kids think a lot about me.”
Because the parent-child relationship is the most important part of the tough job of running the household and raising the kids, Myhre says, it should not matter to outsiders whether the mom or dad is doing the potty-training or teaching their kids the ABCs. What works for each particular family should simply be accepted in society without having to question if a man is fit to be a stay-at-home parent while the woman goes to the office and makes the money.
Even though Hughes says she can see why the stereotype of the typical stay-at-home mother and breadwinning father is still around today, from her experience she says it felt completely normal growing up because that was all she knew. She admits if her mom would have been home with her at all times, she would have been raised differently, but not necessarily in a better way.
“I think the right way to raise your kids is to stay home with them and teach them yourselves, and whether I’m doing it or my wife’s doing it, it’s just a nonissue,” Shemick says. “Wouldn’t it be great that if in the future, all gender issues were nonissues?”