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It was check-up day for 3-month-old Seattle twins Jack and Lauren.
Their parents, Alan and Sarah Chitlik, were both there.
"Mom, how much are they eating?" the nurse asked. "Are all their immunizations up to date, Mom?"
Alan Chitlik tried not to be annoyed. He knew the answers to all those
questions, because he'd been the twins' stay-at-home dad since they
were born.
"I was frustrated by that," Chitlik says. "I'm their parent, too."
Yet, Chitlik says that incident was perhaps the only time he has felt
ignored in his role as primary caregiver to the twins, who are now 11
1/2 months old. "I think the traveling circus show of having twins
dwarfs the novelty of me being a stay-at-home dad," he says. "In
general, when I tell people, the response is 'Good for you.' I don't
feel like an oddball by any means."
Stay-at-home dads are hardly oddballs these days, but their numbers are
small. According to the most recent statistics available from the U.S.
Census Bureau, stay-at-home dads numbered 147,000 in 2005, although
that number is disputed by some because it excludes dads who work
part-time. While the number of stay-at-home dads is increasing, it
continues to be dwarfed by the 6 million moms who stay at home.
Stephanie Coontz, professor of history and family studies at Evergreen
State College in Olympia, says the idea of dads assuming the role of
primary caregiver has become more accepted but "acceptability of a
behavior lags behind translating it into behavior."
For example, she says, studies show that people believed that housework
and child care should be shared responsibilities at least five to 10
years before it actually was. Now, dads are doing an average of 40
percent of the housework and child care, according to recent articles
in the Journal of Marriage and Family.
The decision for dad to stay at home can be the result of long,
heartfelt deliberations by a couple, or thrust suddenly upon them when
the father loses his job. Sometimes it just seems to happen naturally.
"It was decided even before we started having kids," says Ed Caldeira,
Renton father of two boys. "We knew our children were not going to be
raised in day care."
Noting that his own father had been a workaholic, Caldeira wanted
something different for his kids. "It (staying home) seemed like a
natural thing for me to do for some odd reason -- maybe because I
wanted to do it," Caldeira says.
Luis Ona of West Seattle says he and his wife also had misgivings about
leaving son David, then almost 2, in day care. "He was getting more
cognizant of things around him," Ona says. "I thought, 'Why not just
learn from me?'"
How did they decide he would be the one to stay home? "That's easy," he says. "She made more than I did."
'My personality fits this'
The same held true for Michael Cummings, Bellevue dad of two young
daughters. His wife Chris was named vice president of finance, the
first woman in her company's history. "My wife was making three or four
times what I was at a particular point," he says. "For some reason, my
personality fits this."
A busy divorce lawyer running his own firm, West Seattle dad Larry
Wallach walked away from his hectic professional life to stay home with
Millie, 26 months, and 6-month-old Theo. His wife, a scientist with a
bio-tech firm, got promoted to a management job requiring long hours
and lots of travel. "We started with parallel careers. But hers took
off like a rocket. I enjoyed what I was doing, but I'd been doing it
for 20 years," he says.
Wallach says staying at home feels like a different career: "I like
being a trailblazer in a way -- being different. I like being a bit of
a rebel." His time at home has taken him in a whole new direction. He
speaks passionately about his time volunteering for Court Appointed
Special Advocates (CASA), representing at-risk children in court, and
for Social Venture Partners, which fund a variety of social service
organizations.
Edmonds dad Larry Fuell retired three years ago from a 21-year career
in the foreign agriculture service to stay at home with his three
teenagers. His wife, who left work in 1986 when their first child was
born, has started a teaching career.
"Let's face it. She did the heavy lifting for the first 15 years while
I was running around saving the world," he says. "She was stronger
dealing with smaller kids; I was better dealing with teenagers."
The choice came suddenly for author and screen writer Scott Fitzgerald
Gray, who got fired from his job as production and information services
manager for a Vancouver, B.C. newspaper. His daughters were 3 1/2 years
and 6 months old at the time.
"The idea of being a stay-at-home dad had never even occurred to me; I
didn't think it was feasible or practical," he says. "I decided to take
a couple of weeks off and hang out at home with the kids. I spent two
weeks with them, and I said 'screw it. I'll never have this opportunity
again.'"
Charles Greer moved to Mercer Island two years ago, because of his
wife's job offer from a biotech firm. His business (publishing an
Internet ski resort guide) and nine employees stayed behind in
Colorado, so now he runs it long-distance from home while he takes care
of his son, 11, and daughter, 7.
"It's certainly a challenge. I try to schedule my time around the kid's
activities," he says. "Every six to eight weeks, I go back for several
days and my wife picks up the slack."
'Dads can nurture as well as mom'
When dads are more involved in their kids lives, good things happen, parenting experts say.
"Study after study after study is showing that father involvement and
warmth and emotional availability to young children predict
intellectual functioning and emotional functioning in both sons and
daughters," according to John Gottman, Ph.D., professor of psychology
at the University of Washington.
Bernie Dorsey, founder of Conscious Fathering, which offers courses for
expectant fathers throughout the Puget Sound region,
(www.consciousfathering.org) says that dads and moms have very similar
parenting styles in the first three years of a child's life. From ages
2-5, the differences start to emerge: Dad encourages physical play and
exploration while Mom concentrates more on the immediate environment.
Neither style is superior, just different, he says.
"With the exception of breastfeeding, it's my conviction that dads can
nurture and care for a child as well as mom," he says.
Stay-at-home dad Cummings also dismisses the worry that men are not
nurturing. "If we focus correctly, we can do a good job of being able
to handle parenting from a different perspective. We're able to enforce
policies that over-nurturing mothers may not be able to. That works out
better for the children overall; we don't have those emotions that get
in the way."
Evergreen Professor Coontz, author of Marriage, a History -- How Love Conquered Marriage, says there are interesting benefits for children of stay-at-home dads.
"When boys have dads as their primary caregiver, they are more
empathetic and better able to talk about feelings," she says. "Girls
tend to grow up with higher confidence and achievement in
non-traditional fields."
Coontz says the benefits of this gender reversal can reach from these
families into the broader society. She points to an expression among
sociologists who talk about "doing gender."
"It refers to the way people play out gender roles," she says. "Undoing
gender, challenging it, has to be a conscious act because of the habits
we all have. But it can be tremendously liberating for the marital
relationship and for the children."
The men say they handle the bulk of household chores -- laundry,
cleaning, cooking dinner -- and they seem to harbor no resentment
toward the domestic drudgery. But, like many moms, Chitlik laments the
fact that he never seems to get anything done. He looks back fondly on
his former life. "I would wake up in the morning with a list of 10 or
12 things I wanted to do, and I would start to work through them," he
says. "Right now, I don't even have time to make a list."
'I'd rather stay home with my kid'
Although some dads miss their professional identity, they don't feel diminished in their new role.
"I don't know if it's a guy thing... but we do tend to identify
ourselves with what we do," Fuell says. "I sometimes yearn for a
professional identity, but I have no regrets."
Wallach agrees. "I was afraid I'd be marginalized, but I don't think that's happened," he says.
He and others believe the Northwest may have a more laid-back attitude
than other parts of the country. "I'm a New Yorker," he says. "To my
friends on the East Coast, this is incomprehensible."
Ona says his mom was worried about him. "She kept saying, 'The man's
supposed to work.' But I'd rather stay home with my kid."
When he meets other dads in the park and tells them he stays home
full-time, they don't raise an eyebrow, Ona says. "They're like, 'Man,
I wish I could do that.'"
There is recognition that dads who want to return to work may face the
same problems that have confronted moms for years. "You have to account
for all those blank spaces on the resume; raising kids is not an
acceptable entry," Fuell says. "Why is that?"
If these dads have any major complaint, it's likely to be breaking into
the moms' network they see all around them.
"When you go to the mall, you always see the natural communication, the
natural gravitational pull of the mothers," Cummings says. "There's a
certain amount of trust a lot of moms have just amongst themselves.
It's hard for us because we're not invited into that naturally. We have
to work our way into that. You have to have them feel comfortable
around you to the point they don't even realize you're a man."
Caldeira agrees. "I keep trying to tell the guys that these co-op
preschools are OK and it's OK to be the only guy," he says.
Early on, Wallach joined a PEPS (Program for Early Parenting Support)
group in which he was the only man. "If I ever had a problem, that's
the first place I'd turn," he says. "I'm just one of the girls."
Wallach finds many rewards in being his kids' primary caregiver. He is
certain that his calmer lifestyle has lowered his blood pressure,
helped him sleep through the night and added 10 years to his life.
"I must spend an hour or two a day just hugging them and that's pretty
calming," he says. "They give me so much positive feedback. There are
little rewards almost daily, almost hourly, with kids."
Fuell likes to point to his favorite moment in the movie "Jack Frost."
The main character, a musician, admits that he was so busy trying to be
successful, he didn't realize his kids were his mark on the world.
"I know my children are my mark on the world," Fuell says.
Freelance writer Elaine Bowers lives in Seattle with her husband and twin teen-age daughters.
Cartoon becomes reality for 'Adam' creator
Adam Newman was born in July 1984. He emerged, full grown, from the pen of Seattle Times cartoonist Brian Basset, who thought of him as a new man in society at that time. He was a stay-at-home dad.
Basset did not create Adam, the comic strip, as a social statement. In
fact, when Adam first appeared he was a single guy, a gardener beset by
slugs and talking flowers. People at Universal Syndicate said they
liked the writing, but not the subject matter.
"So I took that character and gave him a wife and kids and kept him at
home; I gave the wife a job," Basset says. "That's how Adam got
started."
Basset didn't even have kids at the time. He was the Seattle Times editorial
cartoonist and started working on the strip as a way to stretch
himself. "I had no expectations or goals or hopes for it to get
syndicated. I thought I would see what would happen," he says.
Basset's knowledge of parenting came from recalling his own childhood
and reading parenting magazines around the office.
"We had our first son in '86, and I was able to tap directly into the
infant years," he says. "That's why I brought in baby Nick (to the
cartoon strip)." During those years, Basset would go into work each
morning at 4 or 5 a.m. to do his editorial cartoons, and then come home
early in the afternoon to take over child care and give his wife,
Linda, a break.
In 1994, when his sons were 5 1/2 and 7, he left the Times.
"I became a full-time dad overnight. I set up my studio at home, and
Linda went back to work," he recalls. "It was a shock." To meet
deadlines for the comic strip, he would stay up until 3 or 4 a.m. "At
the time, it was a blur and it was exhausting," he says. "In
retrospect, I think it was great."
Basset relishes telling stories about school field trips with his sons'
classes. "Because I was the only man, they always gave me the problem
kids -- the future mass murderers, the ADHD kids who couldn't sit
still. I NEVER had a good experience. My wife kept reminding me it was
material for the strip."
But it wasn't all bad. He was art docent for a class and loved putting
together the Spam carving contests. Every contestant, of course, got to
eat the Spam.
A few years ago, Basset changed the name of the strip from "Adam" to
"Adam at Home." "I found myself writing less about a stay-at-home dad
and more about a work-from-home dad," he says.
For years, Bassett gave presentations to groups on his work-from-home
survival guide. He's found more dads in those groups fitting the
work-from-home description.
Perhaps the ultimate irony is that the creator of "Adam at Home" was
eventually pushed out of his own home to do his work. About four years
ago, Basset got a studio on a quiet street in downtown Issaquah. The
reason? Both sons are now in college and one of them started a garage
band.
"My studio was right over the garage," he says. "They would practice
for three hours and I couldn't get any work done."
-- Elaine Bowers
Resources for stay-at-home dads
It is a cool summer day, with Seattle's famous sun breaks slicing
through the cloud cover. Under the towering trees of West Seattle's
Lincoln Park, a handful of men with toddlers and young school-age
children begin to arrive at a nearby playground.
For these dads, it's not a day off with the kids in the park. They have
come to a play date scheduled through Seattle Stay-at-Home Dads
(SeattleDads.org), an organization created by a Redmond stay-at-home
dad looking for ways to find other full-time dads.
Founder Bruce Reynolds says he found that some of his work friends
drifted away after he quit his job to take care of his kids. "I found
it pretty frustrating," he says. "It's lonely and isolating and
sometimes you get funny looks from people."
He created the Web site more than a year ago and soon began to get 100
hits a day. Now there are 85 names in his database and an additional 30
names he has added from personal contact with other dads. The
organization offers opportunities to meet other full-time dads at
regularly scheduled play dates and dads' nights out, a photo gallery of
outings, and links to information.
"I don't know how it is for moms," Reynolds says. "But it's hard organizing guys to get together."
Ed Caldeira, Renton father of two boys, organizes SeattleDads events
and was an early member of the group. How did he come to join? "Do I
have to admit it?" he says. "My wife found it."
In addition to the regularly scheduled events, Caldeira is hoping to
put together a family picnic this fall.
Members come and go, he says. "They'll tell me how great it is to be
able to talk while the kids play. And I think, 'So why do I only see
you every six weeks?"
John Kaiser, who brought his 2 -year-old daughter Madeleine to the
park, moved back to Seattle's Queen Anne neighborhood in December after
living in France near the Swiss border. He says he found out about
SeattleDads before leaving Europe. He'd tried to organize a group in
Geneva, with no success.
"We went to play groups and it was almost always all moms. Half of them
were open and accepting, and the other half ignored you," he says.
Although he was too small to play, 6-month-old Andrew came with his dad
Patrick Lindsay of Bellevue. Lindsay says he's taking his son for his
check-up the next day. "Give him Tylenol about an hour before,"
Caldeira advises.
Staying at home was "tough getting used to -- being at home a lot
without any adult interaction," Lindsay says. "I've been coming for
awhile now. It's nice to know the other dads."
SeattleDads is one of two local Web sites, along with a growing number
of national sites, that offer stay-at-home dads the opportunity to
blog, contact each other, get together and share useful information.
The other local organization is Puget Sound Stay-at-Home Dads, or
PSSAHDads (pssahdads.blogspot.com)
Other Web resources:
Classes for new dads:
Conscious Fathering: Designed to educate and prepare dads for fatherhood, classes are offered monthly at area hospitals. Visit www.consciousfathering.org or call 206-824-8388.
Boot Camp for Dads: Offers support and education by pairing veteran dads with rookie fathers. Workshops are offered at Northwest Hospital. Visit www.nwhospital.org/services/classes_childbirth.asp or call 206-368-1784. The national Web site is www.newdads.com
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