Dealing With Guilt—Whether You Love or Hate Staying Home

Being a stay-at-home dad seems like a perfect job: Watch the kids grow, spend every day with them, stay out of the office and simply enjoy life. But nothing is that simple, is it?

Many stay-at-home fathers can experience guilt for not liking the job enough, and others can feel bad for liking it too much.

Guilty Reasoning

Men are still widely seen as the breadwinners. They are supposed to kiss the wife and kids goodbye in the morning, go to work and come home to hugs and dinner. The roles aren’t supposed to be reversed. To many, a dad who stays home isn’t seen as manly and even women might wonder why a family chose to have the dad watch the kids all day.

Even if the stay-at-home role is one the father chose, dads may start to second-guess their decision. For some, not being their family’s primary provider can be a blow to the ego.

The reasons for guilt don’t stop there.

Whether you love or hate your role, maybe your wife would rather be home, but her job situation is better than yours. That can make both of you feel guilty. Your family has to work around that, too.

Maybe you feel bad for all those who don’t have the same great opportunity you do or because you love staying at home when so many are saying you shouldn’t.

All that can make it difficult to enjoy the important duty. And not fully enjoying being with the kids all day can be wearing.

Dads Outnumbered, Misunderstood?

The stereotypes can be hard to ignore, and the reasons a family makes the decision to promote the father to primary care giver are as diverse as the moms-to-dads ratio at the playground isn’t.

There aren’t that many stay-at-home dads. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there were 5.6 million stay-at-home moms in 2006 compared with 159,000 stay-at-home dads, a number that has nearly tripled in 10 years. Still, less than 3% of all full-time parents are fathers.

Such figures make it easy to be misunderstood. And it’s not always easy to accept your own situation.

The Bigger Picture

The reality is dads can take care of their children just as well as moms.

Additionally, most stay-at-home dads want to be in the role and have made that choice. Many dads can tell you fellow fathers said that they would love to be in their shoes.

And roles within the family can be reversed quickly. Just as you recently began to stay at home, maybe a good job comes along for you or your wife gets the itch to leave the corporate world. Nothing is set in stone.

Those are important factors to remember while attempting to be comfortable with the situation. Look at the bigger picture and what is right for you.

So don’t worry about what other people think and try to stop worrying about how the situation affects you. Remember how important of a job you have.

After all, someone is giving your children adequate care, and you and your children are getting a great experience together. There are worse things to feel guilty about.