Pick up a copy of today’s Wall Street Journal and you might glimpse a headline on the front-cover: “Domestic Dads Do it Their Way.”  Dig a little deeper to the front page of the Personal Journal section and see: “At-Home Dads Make Parenting More of a ‘GUY’ Thing” by Sue Shellenbarger.

First Sentence: “MR. MOM is DEAD.”

Well, why we don’t quite think we’ve arrived at the point where the media will stop using the synonym Mr. Mom for stay-at-home fathers or acronym SAHD for stay at home dad … we do think that the journalists who “get it” (reads Sue Shellenbarger of WSJ, Alex Williams of NYT, Lisa Belkin of HuffPost, & others) are moving BEYOND Mr. Mom and digging deeper into real issues and angles through the fatherhood lens.

This article had depth. Shellenbarger did her homework – she spoke with at least fifteen dads in our NYC Dads Group community including several of their wives to uncover some consistent themes.  She moved outside of the urban jungle and interviewed several members of the Triangle Dads Group in North Carolina as well.  Some topics discussed were that some at-home dads may plunge into DIY tech or construction projects, take the kids on walking tours of Home Depot or on adventurous excursions, or overhaul the household budget. With their children, do at-home dads roughhouse at the park or gym, flex the daytime schedule rather than sticking to routines, or encourage kids to take more risks?These were just a few of the areas explored with interviewees.

Let’s dissect today’s fantastic piece by Shellenbarger, the Work & Family columnist over at the Wall Street Journal whose journalism we’ve admired and respected for quite a while.  She plows into her piece with the angle of how at-home fathers are shaking off old gender-related stigmas and putting a distinctly masculine stamp on the American home life. It navigates way beyond the fluff piece of proud dad changing a diaper and is a complete 180 degree turn from the “bumbling idiots like we are sometimes portrayed.”  The piece by itself seeks to be a voice for parents as we redefine what it means to be a “good dad” in the 21st Century which is right in our sweetspot.

If we want more journalists to truly understand that at-home fathers are shattering stereotypes everyday we need to SHARE articles like these displaying confident, competent, active, and nurturing dads are embracing their roles to be the best dads they can be.  Whether you’re like Bryan Grossbauer, a good friend and active member of our NYC Dads Group, taking both kids on a walk through the woods to dig for worms so they don’t get “cabin fever” or like Niel Vuolo, another active member of our group and contributor to our blog, who involves his children in their Do-It-Yourself home renovation projects, or like Ian Worthington who uses modern technology to keep his parenting life organized  – these men are focusing on their strengths and fitting their children into their lifestyle.

Even though many of the dads in our NYC Dads Group community contributed their time to this article and weren’t mentioned, please know, that your loud and positive voices helped shape this article – thank you!

What is our world coming to?

Listen, as a teacher, I “get it” that hugging a 6th grade student in a school is not a wise move … so I opt for a high five instead to demonstrate my affection or excitement. Today’s Wall Street Journal had a disturbing article (at least from my male point of view). Eek! A Male! – Treating all men as potential predators doesn’t make our kids safer by LENORE SKENAZY provides several examples around the country and abroad were men are thought of as creeps or perverts when it comes to contact with children.  See example below:

(Skenazy) calls it “Worst-First” thinking: Gripped by pedophile panic, we jump to the very worst, even least likely, conclusion first. Then we congratulate ourselves for being so vigilant….Consider the Iowa daycare center where Nichole Adkins works. The one male aide employed there, she told me in an interview, is not allowed to change diapers. “In fact,” Ms. Adkins said, “he has been asked to leave the classroom when diapering was happening.” … Now, a guy turned on by diaper changes has got to be even rarer than a guy turned on by Sponge Bob. But “Worst-First” thinking means suspecting the motives of any man who chooses to work around kids.

I can understand in our ridiculous little world, especially based on what we see in the media, that some might point fingers at many men as potential predators. Believe me, I understand that a man standing around a playground who does not have a child present, could be considered creepy. And yes, New York may not be the most male friendly town.  But, is it fair to stereotype all men that spend too much time around children? As Skenazy concludes, “that’s not a society that’s safe. Just sick.”

Are my opinions jaded or are we better than this?

It felt a little like Father’s Day today over at The Wall Street Journal: Three articles in two days related to Fatherhood! Thanks for the tip Jared.

I am a full-time stay-at-home dad and have been for the past two years. Fortunately, I had the opportunity of an unpaid childcare leave from the NYC Department of Education. I am planning to re-enter the workforce at the end of the summer. Well, at least in a limited capacity, doing part-time work. Excited at the opportunity to increase my adult interaction and enable my son to spend a few days per week in a group setting, this will provide me the opportunity to continue being home with him often to bond. As you can understand, work-life balance is something of paramount importance to most people, especially stay at home dads looking to re-enter the workforce.

Daunting Task For Mr. Mom: Get a Job by Sue Shellenbarger (who often writes great stuff for the WSJ Juggle) in the Work & Family section of The Wall Street journal focuses in on the “outnumbered and Often Isolated, At-Home Dads that Face an Extra-Hard Slog Back Into the Work Force.” There is so much to dissect in this lengthy article. Yep, still can’t shake the “Mr. Mom” terms in the media!

Let’s start with a significant statistic: “A record 7.4% of fathers in married-couple families with children under 18 were home in 2009 while their wives worked, based on unpublished Bureau of Labor Statistics data set for release next week.” It may not sound like much, but that is up two full percentage points from 2008!

The article details information from the interviews of four different fathers from the East Coast: a photojournalist from Columbia, S.C., a former operations manager from Salem, Mass., a former creative director at an ad agency from Wayland, Mass., and an architect from McLean, Va. These interesting excerpts from two of the dads speaks to one common challenge they faced during their job interviews:

he learned not to mention “stay-at-home dad” on his resumé…At first, he proudly put his fathering role on his resume. “I thought it could be an asset,” Mr. Montague says. But like Mr. Hallowes, he found interviews “went off on tangents, talking about how lucky I had been and what a great experience I had,” he says. “I would leave thinking I had made good connections” but then would hear nothing.

And

“I’d be there with a resumé with almost 12 years of professional experience, and I wanted to talk about what I could bring to the job. But instead, I’d spend the hour talking about what it was like to be a stay-at-home father,” he says

Based on these responses, not surprisingly, career coaches advise not including stay at home fatherhood prominently on a resume and to be “ready with a quick, confident explanation of why you decided to stay home” before shifting to topics more suited for the job being discussed.

Let me leave you with one more classic excerpt before you jump into the article on your own:

“At a cocktail party, the conversation turns to, ‘What do you do?’ Someone says, ‘I’m a lawyer, what do you do?’ If you say, ‘I’m a stay-at-home dad,’ the conversation ends. What are other men going to talk about with you? ‘Do you like Velcro on your diapers?'” he says. Instead, he always answered, “I’m an architect.”

This is not the first time I have heard about this scenario. Even so, I have a hard time getting my arms around that. For one, I have not attended a business cocktail party for quite some time. Two, I personally would try to find some commonality to bridge the gap to a more lengthy conversation. Three, I am proud to be a stay-at-home dad so why not share the love! That said, I guess it could make sense if your entire identity is in your work (even though I feel sorry for those fellas because there is so much more to life)!

Lastly, if this topic hits home with you, check out Shellenbarger’s tips for at-home dads returning to work.

At-home parents, feel free to share some of your experiences in returning to the work-force.

As an addendum to yesterday’s blog post on parental leave policies, the NY Times provided some of the reasons most men do not take advantage of their legal right of unpaid FMLA for 12 weeks: “Some decline for economic reasons, but for others, it is fear that keeps them in the workplace — fear of being ridiculed, fear of being discriminated against, even fear of losing their jobs — some specialists say.” A dated article from May 2000, The Fear of Taking Paternity Leave by Melinda Ligos still shares some current and interesting thoughts about this controversial topic.

In our dads’ group conversation last week, we discussed how paternity leave needed the support of senior management & had to be trickled down from the top level of an organization. If new dads in senior management started to take off for 3 months when their kids were born, other employees would follow suit. Then, it might be more of an accepted or standard practice.

Later in the Times article, it states ”While their organizations may profess to be family-friendly, their bosses are giving them the message that men who take leave are not very manly, or are somehow letting down the team.” This statement made me think about something my buddy Matt said – “it is tough to think about parental leave if CEOs don’t support having a family in the first place.” He was referring to a recent Wall Street Journal article, Welch: ‘No Such Thing as Work-Life Balance’ by Cari Tuna & Joann S. Lublin, where former GE CEO Jack Welch spoke at the Society for Human Resource Management’s annual conference and “told women climbing the corporate ladder: you may have to choose between taking time off to raise children and reaching the corner office”…and “There’s no such thing as work-life balance.”

Please share your thoughts on this topic…