Posted on 26. Aug, 2003 by Brian Reid in General
I was all set to get literary today: I finished 20 Days with Julian & Little Bunny by Papa, an account by Nathaniel Hawthorne of his adventures in stay-at-home parenting. But I’m afraid that post will have to wait.
The nice folks at the Wall Street Journal published this story (paid subscription required) (update: article posted free of charge here) on at-home dads re-entering the workforce. Any time the nation’s largest newspaper puts at-home dads on a section front, it’s a big news day at Rebel Dad central.
The take-away is that as more at-home dads enter the workforce, both the prospective employees and their would-be employers are trying to figure out what to make of experience running a household. The conclusions aren’t startling: headhunters think it’s a liability, less so when the person doing the hiring is a woman. But the relieving part of the story is that the author, Kemba J. Dunham, takes a tack that suggests holding at-home fatherhood against job candidates may be real, but it’s certainly not a fair or effective way to find the best workers.
(It should be noted that Dunham gets a plug in for this year’s at home-dads convention. Rebel Dad will be there. Will you?)
dayv glusing
27. Aug, 2003
Put me on the guest list for the convention. And mine isn’t even due until Feb ’04
Michael Weber
27. Aug, 2003
Here’s a quick question for you Rebel Dad: Why were all of the full-time fathers interviewed in the WSJ piece over 40? That was my first thought after finishing the article. Of course, upon further review, I realized that most of the fathers interviewed were in their 30′s when they began their status as full-time fathers. Sometimes, if you look at the media coverage of full-time fathering, it seems like all of the fathers all older.
Maybe the rise in full-time fathers has a direct link to families waiting longer before having children. If a couple decides to wait until they’re more financially stable before having children, maybe the decion-making process is different when it comes to the father staying with the children. Or maybe as men get older, they’re able to realize the importance of having an at-home parent.
Any thoughts?
Rebel Dad
27. Aug, 2003
Michael — I’d love to know what the demographics of at-home fatherhood is, and whether at-home fathers tend to be older than at-home moms, or tend to wait longer to start a family than two-income families. I’m not aware of any stats to that effect, and I would pay to see ‘em.
Two quick additional thoughts:
1) I think that the average age of childbearing is creeping up, especially for professional couples. Lets say the “average” WSJ-reading father started a family at 32, had two kids, three years apart and decided to go back to work when the youngest hit kindergarten. That would put him back in the workforce at about 40. Not too unrealistic.
2) The kinds of folks that reporters find easy to track down tend to have with more connections to the at-home dad network — something that increases with age (the at-home dad convention is a celebration of guys on the far end of a middle age. I’d bet less than five or ten percent are in their 20s). Plus, the WSJ skews older that most other media outlets, I’d wager, so they probably perfer more seasoned guys.
But I’m trying the help balancing things out. I’m still a young pup, so to speak.