Stay-at-home dad

It was way back in 1992 that I radically reshaped my career plans, coincident with the birth of my first son (who, gratifyingly, is now grown up and supporting himself as a hacker for a startup). I read the comments here, read the fine article, and still don't completely grok that I have had much the same experience without as much surrounding cultural baggage. Predominantly "stay-at-home" (a better term might be "near young children") fathers have always been rare, yes, but they have been around for a long time. I have certainly always been able to go to public parks with my children (the first three of whom were boys) or to the library or other places with them.

I haven't heard a lot of the kinds of nasty comments that the author of this interesting submitted article appears to have heard all too often. For me, since we had children, it has been important to spend a lot of time with my children while they grow up. They are only young once each. Way back in the early 1970s, I thought, evidently overoptimistically, that women's liberation would be a force to make it possible for dads to spend more time with their children if the dads so chose. Maybe that doesn't happen as a matter of social reality everywhere, but that is the choice I made, and I'm not looking back. All of my children, the three boys and the one girl, are already thinking ahead about what kind of lifestyle trade-offs they will work out with their spouses when, as they hope, they have children of their own.

One cannot emphasize the author's point too much that taking care of young children is a lot of work that demands constant vigilance. Authors from the women's liberation perspective used to argue that that is one of the best reasons to hire former homemakers as they return to the outside-the-home paid labor force--it takes strong personal organization skills to take care of young children. I don't know if that's what big company employers really think, but it sure makes sense to me.

To be clear for onlookers new to my posts here, we are a homeschooling family, so the high parental involvement with children (again, not "stay at home" but "out and about with the children") has continued in our family even though our youngest child is above typical school-going age. We like this lifestyle, because we like what it appears to be doing for our children. There are trade-offs involved in any lifestyle choice that relates both to family and to work responsibilities, but there is plenty of time for working in anyone's day, and a lot of good memories that can be built up from quality family time.

In other words, in countries where men make all the rules and run the show nobody dares look askance at a man in a public setting?

Go figure.

Sure. Then I'd retract and say that what your dog really needs is to be out in the wild being raised by its own real doggy parents (who most likely get a 120-moon leave from work).

i know, feminism is a sacred cow.

the truth is that men tend to be highly valued in the 3rd world. by comparison in the west they tend to kill themselves as they get older: http://www.prb.org/Articles/2006/ElderlyWhiteMenAfflictedbyH...

are you aware we've blocked right wing research out of academia, so these issues never get researched properly?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/science/08tier.html?_r=0

and that margaret mead was basically a fraud? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coming_of_Age_in_Samoa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Freeman

(margaret mead is an early feminist)

Ripped directly from a rejection letter I received:

"I think instead of making a more detailed offer, I should consider certain facts.

For starters, you have a family and that'll be the driving force behind all your decisions. Secondly, you will not be able to be here in the program with me. Ideally, I want someone who could be here though not necessary. More importantly, it's the family situation I consider. I've worked developers before with family and the company died largely because of that. I don't want to say that'll happen but I worry.

This other candidate is like me. No responsibilities except {COMPANY NAME}. That makes life less complicated. Based on this - nothing to do with skills - it's best that him and I work together. "

The program was one of the startup accelerators (not YC). He was right that my family would have been the driving force behind all my decisions. He was wrong in thinking that's a bad thing. I can't imagine a bigger motivator than my family. When you have kids, failure just isn't an option.