Before my wife and I were married, we dreamed about what our future would look like. In this dreamland of ours, my wife would be an attorney and I would be a star on Broadway’s stage. So, without knowing anyone in New York City but with plenty of confidence in ourselves, we packed a U-Haul with all our belongings and headed from Columbus, Ohio, to The Big Apple.
Then, during the summer between my wife’s second and third year of law school, our first son was born. For the next couple of years, we would hand him off to one another on the subway as she came home from classes or work and I would go to auditions or some job that I hated. When she graduated and began working as an attorney, we were finally in a financial position where I could focus on acting full-time.
A year later, our daughter was born.
We could have continued our old lifestyle stressfully carting our children around on the subway and handing them off to one another with barely enough time to give a hello/goodbye kiss to one another. If we had chosen this route, then not only would our children not have had a lot of time with both their parents, but my wife and I would not have seen each other that much either.
The choice was pretty clear for us. If we were going to have the ideal family life, then one of us would have to stay home. Since my wife was the one with the established career, the lot fell to me.
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This is a fascinating topic and I was pleased to see it on the Times, though dismayed to see that we continue to sidestep some of the most fundamental issues – lack of flexibility regardless of sex (ridiculous considering how many decades we’ve been talking flex time, and now have the technology for knowledge workers to be productive anywhere); the skewed emphasis of cultural values (how many families can’t afford for one parent to stay home?), the issues of employment relationship versus “independent” status, lack of options for children (day care, after school care) depending on location and again, socioeconomic status…
A critical and involved discussion. (My thoughts, if of any interest: http://dailyplateofcrazy.com/2013/12/08/wall-street-women-lean-in-stay-at-home-dads-help-wives-careers/ )