Stay-at-home

My New Minority Status

"You go into your classrooms, you shut the door, and you shut yourself off from your colleagues."

When I was a high school teacher the principal would often gently admonish the faculty in this way.  In truth, he was right to do so.

In teaching, being isolated was easy to accomplish.  For many of us, it was preferred.  In a job where your students feel more like your colleagues than your fellow teachers it was easy to barrel through a day without even communicating with your fellows (except to commiserate, of course).  Much of the time we didn't even want our fellow teachers' input or attention - our lesson plans were our own, our methods were our own.

I now find myself in a profession even more isolated in nature - that of the stay-at-home parent.

I could say "stay-at-home dad" but really the job is difficult for either side of the gender line.

Still, though, I'm rare.  Here's a little statistic from the federal government:

158,000 - estimated number of stay-at-home dads in 2009. These married fathers with children younger than 15 have remained out of the labor force for at least one year primarily so they can care for the family while their wives work outside the home. These fathers cared for 290,000 children. Among these stay-at-home dads, 59 percent had two or more children, and 57 percent had an annual family income of $50,000 or more.

This seems to have remained constant according to more recent numbers released in the Current Population Survey in March 2011.

 

How Did I Get Here?

I'll pretend as though some of the people who read this blog do not know me personally and, therefore, do not know how I came to be a stay-at-home dad.  Indulge me, it helps keep the narrative going.