A little background. Not an AHD yet but the wife is a few months along now w/ our first. We're really excited, but expecting alot of work in the years to come as far as parenting goes. She is a school administrator, has smokin' benefits, and is the primary bread winner. I am a construction mngr and not too far behind salary-wise. We are playing w/ our budget to see if we can swing me staying home for awhile w/ the kid.
I, like most everyone else, grew up being programmed/socialized for the working world. Its fine, I like it. I have never been without a job since age 18 and never been without real job since age 22. I don't really enjoy the stress and hassle of the management side of things but I know I will have a hard time leaving the money and the routine behind. Make no mistake, I am not saying primary caregiver isn't work. I have no perspective on it but suspect its harder & more satisfying than any job I've ever held.
However, I can't fathom dropping a child off at day care everyday, going to work for 10-12 hours a day, just to give that money back to said daycare. I guess I am looking for some input/opinions from you guys. The kid has to come first.
-The staying @ work vs. daycare thing?
-At what point do you make the trade?
-Is it a trade?
-Is there a feeling of guilt either way?
(Maybe its just me, but I have a little feeling of male guilt going already
with respect to working vs. not working/full time parent).
-Aside from income, what were your major anxieties about leaving your regular job?
-How many of you guys are free lansing, consulting, or have a nice side gig
going to suppliment the current household income?
Maybe I am jumping the gun. Perhaps in a few months it'll be a no brainer. I won't know unitl the kid gets here but I'd like to try to prepare as best I can w/ info from guys who are already making it work.
Thanks
Join the party
I shared a lot of the same concerns you have and still do after a couple of months as a father. My fulltime status with the kid begins in about a month when wifey goes back to work.
The major difference is that what I've been doing career-wise in order to allow myself to stay home has basically not worked out well. The company I started years ago is struggling and I now have a non-existent paycheck. I wash hoping to have grown things so that I could take a back seat and have a great little side gig going for some steady, albeit modest, income. That's now zero, so the feelings of being an at home dad while never accomplishing the goal to have generated an ongoing stream of supplemental income weigh very hard on somebody like me.
But I don't like the idea of using daycare so its time to get over it and embrace my status. "They say" that a stay at home mom earns the equivalent of 70k a year so it should be roughly the same for a father, there is value in that. I would surely have guilt outsourcing our parenting to daycare but that's just one guy's point of view - I'd never condemn anybody that choose that route and I'm not the boss of anybody, people are allowed to make their own decisions there.
I think often about finding a "nice side gig" and hope what I currently do can be saved and turn into that once again for me. I have my doubt ... my days up and my days down.
Anxiety: well, there's a lot of that in general ... its not all about the career or current job. A lot of guys have talked about anxiety, taking medications and seeing shrinks and that will always be a topic.
I've had a hard time coming to terms with all of this, maybe harder than some of the guys on this site. I'm sure there are a few guys here that took up the status with flying colors and I hope it becomes that for me as I go fulltime.
I too had the same concerns.
I too had the same concerns. You need to prioritze what you want. I have been a full time sahd since sept. 2007. I have two daughters ages 2 and 5.
I was so hell bent on not having day care or grandparents raise my kids. I convinced my wife to switch careers, sell our house and move to Oregon to change our lifestyle. We are so happy we did this! I had a tough time adjusting. I felt I needed to have a job and help out. After about six months of adjustment, I realized that this is my job. I don't give a Sh*% what people think. I'm doing what I want to do. Not what society thinks I should do. Having a kid changes everything.
freelancing
I did some freelance editing and proofreading work when I began my FTCR (full-time child roadie) gig 5 1/2 years ago, but it turned out to be too difficult. I did some writing for a while, too, but it was low pressure and long deadline (reviewing CDs, interviewing artists and, separately, writing a few profiles for the Society for Commercial Archeology). Mainly I did that stuff to keep my hand in writing and editing. For a while now I've been focusing on fiction, which is more rewarding, but harder to get published.
My biggest fear is that when I go back to work in any capacity outside the house, I'll have been away from any kind of office job for so long that I'll have a lot to catch up on, and while it will be easy to explain what I've been doing, I won't have much to show for it business-wise. My daughter is 10 months old, so I'll be home with her for a few years anyway, and therefore have time to make a plan to re-enter the work force.
www.davebrigham.com