I'm totally going about this stay-at-home dad business the wrong way. Apparently instead of shopping for dinner and cleaning the kitchen and quelling tantrums and mastering that $#@! sippy cup and passing on language and praying to dear lord sweet jebus for nap time, I should be watching as many sports programs (matches? meets?) as possible, finding new hobbies, like surfing and building rocking chairs, and not worrying about "wasting" that college degree.
Uh huh.
This particular vision of the at-home parenting lifestyle is by a Stanford college student who penned a column -- "It's sad we don't consider becoming a SAHD" -- about all the glories and free time at-home dads have suddenly wandered into.
I'm not going to rip apart this poor, deluded lad -- despite the gravy boat of opportunities:
"Aren’t you going to be bored staying at home all day? Not when you have more hobbies than a ten-year old. I will definitely need to live by the ocean so I can surf and have a garage where I can watch “The New Yankee Workshop” on PBS and make cool furniture with fancy tools. I’ll sing lullabies on my guitar and take lots of pictures while practicing my black-and-white photography skills. Then there are the things I still want to learn: chess, French and car mechanics."
For starters, that's pretty funny -- and I think he was trying to be funny. I hope. But also because Rebel Dad has already linked to this particular story and at-home dads are ganging up on him like it's Dollar Day at Baby Legs. (The comments are the best part of the whole thing.) But the real reason I'm not going to rip him apart is because this particular vision is, sadly, shared by many.
I can't tell you how many single friends I have who think I've got it made -- and I do, to a degree, because I am watching my girl grow -- but wow, learning French? Going surfing? Being bored? Do people really think at-home dads shove their babies in a closet all day? Would they think the same about a mom?
