RebelDad

Posted on 31. Oct, 2005 by Brian Reid in General

There are now more than 50 blogs in my at-home dad blogroll at right. Most of those are thoughtful musings on daily life, but the freedom of writing online means that there’s not actually very many examples of short, pithy pieces about what it’s like to be an at-home dad. So it was most pleasant to run across this first-person piece from the Guardian (UK). It does a great job of capturing the job without sugar-coating it:

I realize that the complaints I have are the complaints of a billion housewives since women started keeping cave; looking after children and a home is low-status, poorly rewarded and self-esteem sapping. It’s also hard to do well. It turns out that being a househusband is very much like being a housewife - what sex you are makes very little difference.

And the author unloads with an astute insight about why it’s so hard to accomplish anything even when the day doesn’t exactly end up filled:

Of course there are short periods when Jack entertains himself with pots or pans, or in his sandpit. But these periods cannot be relied upon, or scheduled round. The actual work of househusbanding may only take five hours a day but those five hours are smeared across the 13 hours that Jack is awake in a wholly unpredictable manner.

Then again, I read one of the best blog postings in some time last week. Check out Dadventure’s 7 Tips for Potential Stay at Home Dads. Great stuff. Read it.