Challenges faced by stay-at-home dads

Armin Brott, Dad, Author & Radio Host, explains the most common challenges faced by stay-at-home dads and offers advice on how to overcome those challenges
Common Challenges Faced By Stay-At-Home Dads
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Challenges faced by stay-at-home dads

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We do a lot of socialization in our culture. We kind of rate men based on how much money they make and a lot of our identity is tied up in our careers. And we tend to rate women in a similar sort of way except it's are they the one that the baby comes running to with a skinned knee, are they the primary caretaker? When you have a situation where there's a stay-at-home dad and the mom is the one who's making more money, that throws everything up in the air. It's going to be really hard for your partner to understand that she's gonna take flack from people that she's not a good mother because she's not the one who's staying at home. So she's going to have a lot of issues, and she's going to come home and she's going to want to spend time with the child, and the child may go screaming and running away from her towards you because you're the partner who's there. On the other side of it, you're going to feel possibly way left out of everything that's happening. You're not going to be keeping up on what's going on in the business world or wherever you were before. You're not going to be able to keep your skills sharp. So it's important going into the whole thing to have some serious discussions about, first of all, how long is this going to last? You don't want to have an open-ended sort of a thing. Who's going to be doing what? Because you see the stereotypical kind of TV scene where, "Here, your turn," as soon as somebody comes home. You can't do that; it may work in the movies but it doesn't work in real life. People have to spend some time getting back. So understanding that your partner may feel very threatened by you taking on an active role at home, and you may feel very threatened when she's trying to take that away from you in a way, and it's only going to be in the most good-natured of ways. So the expectations are absolutely critical about when you go into the situation of being a stay-at-home dad to have those conversations.

Armin Brott, Dad, Author & Radio Host, explains the most common challenges faced by stay-at-home dads and offers advice on how to overcome those challenges

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Armin Brott

Dad, Author & Radio Host

A former Marine, Armin Brott has devoted the last 15 years to providing men with the tools, support, and knowledge to help them become the fathers they want to be—and their families need them to be. His seven critically acclaimed books for fathers have sold well over a million copies. Titles include The Expectant Father: Facts, Tips, and Advice for Dads-to-Be and The New Father: A Dad’s Guide to the First Year. He has written on fatherhood for hundreds of newspapers and magazines and is a frequent guest on such television programs as the Today Show. He also writes a nationally syndicated newspaper column (Ask Mr. Dad), and hosts a syndicated radio show (Positive Parenting). He lives with his family in Oakland, California.

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