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Full-Time Father: How to Succeed as a Stay-at-Home Dad
by Richard Hallowes
So your partner earns more than you do? You've been made redundant? You hate the job? Being a full time dad can make a lot of sense. But isn't it a bit weird? Actually no; it's a growing trend. Nearly one in ten fathers in the UK now takes the main responsibility for looking after the kids, often full time.
Full Time Father is written by a stay at home dad and draws on his survey of other 'homedads' as well as on his own experience. The book examines all the key issues, passes on masses of valuable tips and advice, and lets the reader know what to expect - both good and bad - should they decide to become a homedad themselves.
This is a great book - a hands-on, amusing and realistic look at life as a stay at home dad. What is really refreshing is that it is actually written by a dad who has been there, seen it and done it!addy's Home - New Life Planner for Fathers is a guide from Working Families which looks at how men can balance the changing demands of work and family life.
Coping Emotionally
There are days when the world sucks. Even when you are a stay at home Dad and you haven?t got to put up with all the hassles of work, there are days when the world sucks. I mean it really sucks.
After a night with a teething baby who seems to have developed a complete resistance to any pain killing medication and who hasn?t eaten for three days because their gums hurt too much but somehow still manages to produce copious amounts of diarrhoea on an hourly basis, the stay at home Dad has to wave his partner off to work cheerfully in the morning. You already know that today is going to be one of those days when the office seems like an attractive place to be, when the toddler decides that today is the day when a) he will not do anything you ask, and b) it would be fun to repeat everything you say back to you.
In an attempt to get as much attention as possible, as he is resentful of the new baby, he has decided to regress his potty training to the point at which you might as well never have bothered with it in the first place. As you clean the living room carpet for the third time that morning you are gripped by the horrible realisation that this is your life, and your partner will be out of the house for another eight hours, but only as long as her four o?clock meeting doesn?t overrun. When that meeting finishes she?ll have ?just a couple of things to tidy up? before she leaves the office. Eight hours is the minimum.
Wonderful as they are, children are not designed for a stress free existence on the part of their primary carer. You remind yourself that you were once on the high potential list for a major corporation, and your career might have become something you could have been proud of, yet here you are, unable to cope with two small children.
When Kids Get Poorly
It doesn't even have to be anything that the kids actually do. In the early years they can be just naturally difficult. They have a lot to come to terms with. They get scared and confused by anything from the television news to the old lady who lives down the road; they have to go through teething, a whole range of injections, and they have no immune system worthy of the name. Perfectly normal healthy children seem to spend a lot of time ill. If they?re not ill, then they are about to be ill. If they?re not about to be ill, then the next time you go out with them they will end up playing with a child who is ill, and then they will be ill as well.
The bad news is that when kids get sick they get bad tempered and crabby. Crabby kids are not as much fun as happy kids. Actually they?re not much fun at all, especially the times when ?crabby? appears to have become their default state. As soon as they become ill, all the plans for those great days out with Dad suddenly don?t seem like such a good idea.
And as soon as the kids become ill, it is inevitably a particularly virulent virus, and it is only hours before the stay at home Dad is ill as well. (We all know that men suffer from illness much worse than women. We don't have colds we have the flu, and we don't have a tummy bug, we have a major gastric infection.) And to think that you thought you had to handle pressure and stress in your job. In most cases that will feel as if it was nothing when it comes to dealing with the pressures and stresses of your own children on a daily basis.
Delegation
At work there was always the chance to share some of the workload, or perhaps even to delegate some of the more unpleasant tasks. At least there was normally someone you could talk to and share your concerns with, or a boss who you could go to for guidance, however unhelpful it turned out to be.
As a stay at home Dad it can feel as if there are no options available to you. It is you versus the world, and the world is winning. There is nobody to delegate anything to, and nobody you would feel comfortable talking to about how you feel or what you are going through. They would only give you an 'I told you so' look and be confirmed in their opinion that a man really can't take on the role of looking after children. The grandparents are in Portugal on a cheap golfing holiday and your partner is preoccupied with her problems at work. These issues can apply just as much to a stay at home Mum as they do to a stay at home Dad, but there is a difference in that the formal support systems that help parents deal with these challenges are more focused on providing support for a mother than a father.
To make things worse, no one around you seems to be having any difficulty dealing with their children. It's just you. The good news is that this is not really the case. Everyone seems to go through similar problems and similar feelings in response to the strains of daily childcare.
The key thing is to find a way to deal with them and to get access to support when you need it. At times, this may well include lying in wait by the front door for your partner to return home so that you can present her with her children.
The Difficult Times
The constant nature of dealing with children, and the toll that sleepless nights and difficult days can take, can lead to a variety of emotions. These may include:
- Low self esteem as a result of not working any more and potentially feeling that you are not making a worthwhile contribution or coping adequately with your role. Most stay at home Dads who experience this say that it is a temporary emotion in the early days and that the feeling dissipates over time.
- Guilt that your partner has to go out to work all day when she may have been equally happy to stay at home and look after the children.
- Resentment that you are the one who had to give up work while your partner happily continues her career as if you had never had children.
- Envy at your partner's ability to get out of the house every day and do real things with grown-up people.
- Uncertainty about whether you?ve really done the right thing, whether you can cope as a stay at home Dad, and what it is going to do to the children.
- Disappointment that your old employers seem to have been able to cope perfectly well without you since you left, and in fact your replacement at work is busy undoing every good idea you ever had and blaming you for every failure in the company.
- Concern about your future and whether time out of the workplace as a stay at home Dad is going to ruin your career forever. Most mothers have a tough time re-entering the workplace; imagine the interview you?re going to go through when they ask you what you?ve been doing for the last few years.
Note that all the above emotions are accompanied by an intense self-loathing for having any of these feelings in the first place.
While I?m sure that the occasional intense bout of self-pity can be a healthy cathartic experience and good for the soul, some of these emotions are quite probably nothing more than the result of spending too much time on your own with too much time to think and not enough to occupy your mind. However, regardless of cause, and knowing that ?just pull yourself together man? is not always the most useful advice, they need to be dealt with and managed.
If you become unhappy as a stay at home Dad then you have to expect that this will not be good for you or your partner, and most definitely not for the children. Children need your full attention, and not a half-hearted going through the motions stay at home Dad who is quietly wishing he was somewhere else doing something different.
How Do You Cope?
So how do you cope with all this? What do stay at home Dads do to cope emotionally?
- Get some time for themselves in the evenings or at the weekend.
- Find a friend they can dump on when necessary.
- Have a range of people who can take the kids for an hour if needed.
- Visit friends with children the same age.
- Use virtual communities on the internet to talk to other stay at home Dads (and stay at home Mums) to share problems, request advice, or just to have a quiet moan about things.
The first thing is to know that this is going to happen, and at least that way it is not a surprise when it does. There will be days when you end up watching the clock to see just how much of the day is left before you can get some relief from the constant childcare activity. There is always an accompanying sense of guilt with this, and a feeling of being unable to cope, but it is a perfectly normal thing to happen.
The skill is in being able to get through it. If I had my time again, one thing I would learn to do before becoming a stay at home Dad would be to meditate. I have to admit to not being in any way new age, and I have no faith in the healing power of crystals, nor have I been tempted to arrange the house on Feng Shui principles, but I do sometimes crave the ability to carry on performing mundane tasks while mentally zoning out, or to achieve moments of calm in the midst of complete chaos.
Secondly, this is where you find a way to call on your support network of other parents, family, and friends. The problems you have seem a lot less when you can get the kids to play with someone else's children while you have a cup of coffee, or when you can, even just for half an hour, leave them somewhere else being looked after by someone you trust. I know of some people who, when no family or friends are available, will use the shopping centre cr?che for this exact purpose. It is inexpensive, well run, safe, and close to a coffee shop. What more could you ask?
Thirdly, the basis on which you went into being a stay at home Dad can help you through these occasional emotional crises. Most stay at home Dads made a choice to take on this role for very good reasons, other than just pragmatic financial concerns. If you can remind yourself of why you?re doing this, and what you are aiming to achieve, then you can more easily convince yourself that you have to take the rough with the smooth.
Finally, it is worth remembering that almost all stay at home fathers will tell you that this is the most fulfilling, rewarding and satisfying thing they have ever had the opportunity to do, and most of them consider themselves to be incredibly fortunate to have this opportunity.
Dealing with the difficult days can provide an immense feeling of satisfaction in itself. Getting a child through an illness, controlling the crying through the teething process, or working with your toddler to correct their behaviour are all tough tasks, but they are normally the ones that carry the most emotional reward.
HomeDad UK is delighted to bring you this exclusive extract from Richard Hallows' complete guide to staying at home, published by White Ladder Press.
© Richard Hallowes 2004
"Full-Time Father" by Richard Hallowes is available to buy from Amazon.co.uk