I frantically jot down encouraging notes on nice card stock. I should have done this days ago, but I am juggling six projects at work and the emails keep rolling in. I was up for two hours in the middle of the night, trying to put my five-month-old back to sleep, and now, by 9 a.m., I’m just getting my first sip of coffee. My coffee cup reads Tired As a Mother, keeping it hot as well as sardonic.
My husband is a stay-at-home dad, and I think our family is better off for it.
Even with work, emails from my side hustle and three pumping sessions, I still manage to leave work early to deliver the notes and other supplies to a local nonprofit where I’m hosting an event I won’t be attending. My pregnant friend who has a two-year-old, like me, will be covering my ass while I rush home to relieve my husband and attend to two sick babies two and under.
And that’s just Tuesday.
My husband is a stay-at-home dad, and I think our family is better off for it. Not wanting to stay at home, and acknowledging my partner approaches childcare better than I would, doesn’t make me less of a mom. In fact, it makes me a better one for recognizing where I am weakest and showing my daughters what else a woman can do.
Even from the beginning of our relationship, it seemed things would end up working out the way they did. My husband has a lot of ambition, but he is driven most by family. He grew up without a father, so being a good one has always been his number-one priority. And the other passions that inspire him—art, interior design and architecture—are ones he can pursue outside the confines of a strict 9-to-5. And while I always dreamed of being a mom, accomplishments outside the home have always been a priority for me. Making a difference in the community through my work gives me great personal satisfaction, which, in my mind, makes me a better wife and mother when I am home.
Childcare is a major decision point for a couple when a woman gets pregnant. Both my husband and I preferred a parent stay home with our children if we could manage. And it made sense for him to do it. He was just graduating with a second degree to change careers, while I had an established career in healthcare philanthropy. He enjoys being home, while the monotony and lack of constant adult interaction would drive me to become a “mommy needs a drink” cliché.
He must be lazy, uneducated or unmotivated to get a “real” job. I must want to switch places, or at the very least, he probably isn’t doing the job as well as I would.
In practice, it’s the best decision we ever made. Our daughters are well adjusted, developing a special relationship with their dad and learning constantly in ways I might not have thought to teach them. From the outside, my worries should be as far away as a six-figure salary.
And yet, the mom guilt and pressure—both internal and external—could not feel more real. A 2014 Pew Research Center study reported the number of stay-at-home fathers has doubled in the last 30 years, but public perception of our decision is usually decidedly negative—toward both of us. He must be lazy, uneducated or unmotivated to get a “real” job. I must want to switch places, or at the very least, he probably isn’t doing the job as well as I would.
But the truth of it is, he is better suited for the role. He is much more patient and flexible. He is an innate teacher, and his creative mind makes play more entertaining. No one hosts a Super Hero Girls dolls’ dance party quite like my husband.
He has two degrees. He could very easily get another job, but he finds this one to be more rewarding. It saves us on the astronomical sum we would be dishing out for daycare, only to have someone else raise our children—something we decided early on we’d try to avoid. And, please, let me be in the room when you tell a mom staying at home makes her lazy.
Justifying our decision to others is only half the battle. Once I fight off the old-school stigmatization of working women, I then have to contend with my own demons, which are far more difficult to suppress.
Working motherhood is a balancing act that never quite reaches equilibrium. It’s no secret—it’s actually a fact, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 2018 American Time Use Survey—that women spend double the amount of time caring for children during a day than men. That’s not true in our house, of course, yet I still feel the pressure.
Being the breadwinner as a woman is a constant state of second-guessing whether I’m good enough.
The proverbial hamster wheel never stops running. Am I making enough to support our family? Am I performing well enough at work to keep my job in the first place? Am I spending enough time with my kids? Am I giving my partner a break when he needs it? Am I paying attention to our relationship? Am I spending time with friends? Is my mom seeing my children enough? Have I talked to my sister lately? And then I’m managing schedules, making doctor’s appointments, deciding what to make for dinner, actually making the dinner, sterilizing the bottles and locating the car registration, the favorite sippy cup and my sanity.
Being the breadwinner as a woman is a constant state of second-guessing whether I’m good enough. It’s just the reality the expectations are not the same for a male breadwinner. Having a parent stay at home doesn’t preclude the other from child-rearing responsibilities, yet it seems more socially acceptable that men get a “get out of jail free” card in that department when they are the working parent.
Despite the stress, I wouldn’t change our arrangement for the world. It can be a lot of pressure to bring home the bacon and cook it up—all with a smile on my face and a can-do attitude—but parenting and juggling expectations is a reality we all face no matter what role we play.
At the end of the day, if I juggle more balls than I drop, that’s a win. I can always pick them back up tomorrow.
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