Don't Call Me a Stay-at-Home Dad

How I learned to be a lead parent

Okay, who’s ready for a little movie trivia?

In 1983, a film came out with such a RIDICULOUS premise, such a preposterous plot, audiences flocked to the theater just to see how the filmmakers were going to pull it off. It was a comedy about — get this — a man who had to stay at home with his kids and do all the domestic stuff! HA! Can you believe it?! I mean, the balls on those producers, to think people would pay money for something so absurd. But it paid off. Moviegoers were so curious to see how a man could actually pull off his wife’s duties, it became the 9^th highest grossing film of 1983, beating out Vacation, Superman III, and 48hrs.

Can anyone guess the film?

That’s right. Mr. Mom, starring Michael Keaton, and ho-ly shit take a look at the trailer to see how far we’ve come.

Now, fast-forward (Let’s see how many movie terms I can use in this post) forty-some years— Not only is the notion of the man being a lead parent no longer laughable, it’s trending to become just as common as the traditional woman in that role. And if you get all nerdy and look at the numbers, you can see why: The workforce has shifted. According to the Pew Research Center the amount of households where the wife is the primary or sole breadwinner has nearly tripled since the time Mr. Keaton held his baby’s bare butt up to a hand dryer.

That’s something to celebrate in my opinion. As the father of a daughter, I love that women are leveling out the workplace.

But that shift also means a shift in the household dynamics. I mean, someone’s gotta handle the kids’ stuff, and if the wife’s job is more taxing and financially important than the husband’s, then it falls on him to pick up the slack, right? Seems like a no-brainer.

Well, I can tell you first hand as a man in his forties, shifting your paradigm from being a provider to a lead parent can feel more like a horror film than a comedy. When you’re the lead character, and you find yourself in a completely different movie than the one you’d written your whole life, it can cause some serious drama.

So buckle up - I’m going to take you behind the scenes of how I become the lead parent. How it affected my marriage, my confidence, and my self-worth. And how I’ve come to love my new and improved role. We’ll zoom in for close-ups (movie term) of the day-to-day struggles and pull-out for wide-shots (you get it) of the existential dread that comes with learning to let go and lean in.

Ready? Lights, camera, action!