As we raced through our childhood years, there were those inevitable moments when we stared up into the face of an adult and answered a question that has become all-too common: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
As children, we always seem excited by the question, eager to determine our own fate with a single-word answer, like fireman, doctor, or even painter.
I’ve always had trouble with the question, but now, I’ve got it. I want to be a stay-at-home dad.
Despite my enthusiasm over finally discovering a job I’d be happy with, I’m frequently met with a scoff or a laugh or a wacked-out, mindless stare. I strain to see what the issue is. What’s wrong with a guy filling the role of housewife? Well, according to the modern world, everything.
“Of the estimated 5.5 million stay-at-home parents in the United States, fewer than 100,000 are fathers,” wrote Patrick Tucker in The Futurist, after an interview with Robert Frank, a leading professor of child development in Illinois.
This is a job market that remains remarkably untapped. Women have been dying to get into the workforce for decades, and now, thanks to the long-overdue success of the women’s rights movement, they’ve arrived in droves to fill the shiny leather shoes of CEOs and are finally gracing corner offices with their presence. Yet, men have failed to assume their spouse’s past position of housewife, bringing our extraordinary social progress to a screeching halt.
While it seems males in the modern age have become man enough to allow the opposite sex to file past them in high heels and into high-paying careers, they still haven’t hit the point where they can hand over the position of bread winner to their wives without breaking down into floundering, emasculated little boys.
My own friends have tremendous difficulty choking down the concept, flinching as they pat me on the back and say, “Good for you, man” after I tell them of my scheme. They see my logic as flawed, but I don’t understand why someone wouldn’t want to wake up every morning when the only real challenges of the day involve getting the kids squared away, running errands, paying bills and cooking and cleaning rather than something as scary, stressful and overwhelming as running a business or dealing with clients. I’ll happily let my (future) driven, intelligent and successful wife cater to that last bit, and I’ll even discuss it with her over the marvelous dinner I prepare for her each evening.
This is exactly what some women have been asking of society for centuries. Men have run the world since the dawn of time, and human beings haven’t stopped warring since. Could more harm really be done if the roles were reversed?
Putting the yellow latex dishwashing glove on the other hand, if even for only a short time, enables us to understand the women in our lives in a way we never could, and vice versa. Allowing women to go out in the world and attempt to right its wrongs is just what is needed. Fearing that is ludicrous and overcoming that fear is what makes stay-at-home dads real men.
Reach the columnist at jwadler@asu.edu
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