If you are a househusband or a stay at home dad, or a wife to a stay at home hubby, then this is the article for you. We look at the five things you need to know about this increasingly common relationship and set up at home. If your husband or significant other is thinking about leaving work as you are the breadwinner, but is questioning whether a man can actually do this role well, our list should put you at ease.
We also look at ways that men can improve their abilities whilst staying at home and taking care of the home or family. There are a number of techniques and tips that housewives have been doing for years to ensure that the children, cooking and home all get attended to and never forgotten about.
Can A Man Be A Househusband?
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Without doubt, the resounding answer to this is yes, absolutely. Many husbands may not have had much or any experience with a stay-at-home dad or what is required of them while they support their career woman wife in her work. However, that is not to say it cannot be done and if you are husband wondering whether you are capable of staying at home and supporting the family that way, here are a few things to remember.
Gender Doesn’t Matter
In a world where we are trying to attain equality of the sexes, it is important to remember that gender is not a handicap to your ability to staying at home and taking care of the kids while your wife is the one who goes to work to earn money. For years, women have been doing it and now with them increasingly going into an office to work instead, it goes to show that gender does not matter in any job – be it as the primary childcarer or the the breadwinner.
Men are therefore just as capable in the reverse. Househusbands simply need to practice, like every housewife did before them to ensure that they complete all the duties that are bestowed upon them. This changes from household to household, but house husbands will most certainly adapt to whatever they need to do to keep their family happy.
One of the great things about having a husband who stays at home and looks after the children or house is that they naturally tend to have a different skill set to women . While this may change in future as more and more kids are brought up in an increasingly gender neutral world, it is great to celebrate these differences and the advantages they can bring to a household.
While this may be a sweeping generalisation, men tend to be more practical and less bogged down with the Mom guilt that so many of their female counterparts have struggled with before them. This means that childcare may get simplified while the husband concentrates simply on meeting your kids’ needs as opposed to trying out the latest ‘thing’ to do to keep your kids entertained.
Play To Their Strengths
For any family set up to work, where a couple are raising kids together, or simply for their life to function as a pairing, it is important to focus in on each other’s plus points and strengths. Men will tend to have different skills to women when it comes to running a household – that has children in or otherwise.
Bearing this in mind, ensure that you leverage those strengths to make the most of having men at home. Be that DIY tasks that are always done quickly and promptly. Be they keeping the garden in check by mowing the lawn or any other job that the yard needs.
Playing to one another’s strengths mean that both the wife who is at work and the man who is at home can thrive and be happy. By singing each other’s praises from the rooftops, you’ll be setting a great example to a daughter or son you have, while also supporting each other in your work and day to day life.
Remember House Husband Is A Job Too
By singing each other’s praises, you’ll be putting each other is a good position to know that you do not take each other for granted. One of the benefits of this is that the person that runs the household gets their efforts celebrated too and not marginalised.
This is important as being the one that runs the household and as a consequence maybe takes care of a son, daughter or kids is a full time job too. While it is enjoyable spending so much time with children, it is full on and not relaxing due to kids’ busy schedules or lessons and activities – not to mention their emotional and physical needs having to be met all the time.
It is one job that is never really done, even when children are in bed and there is always work to be done. If you are the wife to a man whose job is looking after your kids, you will need to realise that where you live is your spouse’s office.
How Can I Be A Good Full Time Husband Or Dad?
Here, we look at how a man can be a good stay-at-home dad or househusband so that those that are having a crisis of confidence, can meet any problem head on and not worry about underachieving in a role that has previously be filled by women.
Be Attentive To Everyone’s Needs
One of the most challenging aspects about being the primary caregiver in the family, or the parent that is the first one that the children go to, is that you need to be attentive to everyone within the family unit. This can be hard as your son, daughter and wife will all have very different needs that you will want to pay attention to as the person who feels largely responsible for both their physical and mental well being.
Choosing your words carefully when you talk to each one of them can be useful as well as ensuring that they are all getting enough to eat and enough sleep.
Be Organised
There is very little notice at times of the needs of family members or tasks that you may have to complete at a moment’s notice. It can make doing everything that needs doing difficult to remember. Bearing that in mind, while your wife is at work at the office, it can be beneficial to make lists so that you don’t forget any that needs doing.
Part of a full time dad’s is to be the one who is on hand to help the kids through life and this can mean doing some pretty menial things like the laundry or cleaning the kitchen. Because they are menial, they are easy to put off and sometimes easy to forget. Every parent is guilty of delaying the time when they actually have to do the food shop or any other chore that has to be done for everyone to be happy, but still takes a lot of time.
By Putting Them On A List, You Make Them Impossible To Ignore As Well As Impossible To Forget.
Keeping a diary of everyone’s movements is key to running an efficient household. It means, much like making a list, that you never forget anything that your son or daughter need to attend as well as remembering times that your wife may be stuck at work late so that you have to parent alone that evening.
This is all part of being a full time dad. It can be overwhelming at first when faced with trying to structure a family’s every movement – especially when those movements demand lifts and rides in the car everywhere. By keeping a diary, you will remain on top of life and stay organised which is great example to set your kids on how to operate or work in future.
As part of the means of being organised, many efficient full time parents will extoll the virtues of making meal plans up for the week. In doing so, it means they can make quick work of time in the kitchen – either by batch cooking ahead of time so that freezer meals are actually enjoyable, or ensuring that grocery bills stay low to due to frugal planning ahead.
Plus meal plans let kids know where they are and means you can address their every dietary need so that they get a well balanced intake of all the food groups they need to stay healthy. Meal plans therefore make your life a lot easier and given that feeding a family is a massive part of taking care of your wards, it’s a good idea to write them before you go food shopping each week.
Remember To Have Time For Yourself
One things that many housewives, whether they are mothers to children or not, complain about is that they rarely have time to themselves. This is a natural reaction to having a job that enters around making others happy. It becomes a natural reaction to please everyone and in doing so it can be very difficult for a primary caregiving parent to forget to do anything enjoyable for themselves.
This is essential to maintaining your success as a full time dad. Without having regular breaks, hobbies or pastimes of your own in your life, you will find that you will get tired and suffer from exhaustion very quickly. Instead, take time out to concentrate or focus on you so that you can go back to work feeling refreshed. You’ll be much more capable if you do so.
Another thing that many women were guilty of when it was just the wife who stayed at home was never asking for help when they needed it. This meant that wives often burnt out too quickly or felt like failures when really they were just struggling to cope with all the responsibilities laid at their door.
If you are new to being a stay at home dad and you are unsure of how to address problems with your son at school, or why your daughter seems so unhappy at the moment, ask your wife for help. Asking for help is probably the one word of advice that any moms would give to anyone starting a family where it is the man who is staying with the child and the wife goes to work.
Don’t Strive For Perfection 100% Of The Time
A big down fall that many people have in their quest to run a household is that they try to be perfect. This can actually have the adverse effect of making them less capable due to the crippling nature that trying to be perfect all the time can have.
The reason being is that by striving for perfection in any job or line of work, you will only be setting yourself up for failure. When that happens, frustration occurs and a feeling of powerlessness and ineptitude becomes rife. This is sadly a self fulfilling prophesy at times and it can lead men and fathers continually doubting themselves and then making mistakes they ordinarily would not have done.
Bearing that in mind, try to be kind to yourself if you are one of the many men trying their hand at looking after your family while your wife is at work. Striving for 100% perfection 100% of the time is not necessary when it comes to looking after a baby son or daughter, and any other children.
It is important therefore to be flexible in your approach to parenting if you are the one providing childcare. One son will have different needs to another, and two daughters will have very different needs again. Part of parenting is adapting your approach to each child and seeing your job as one with many hats.
To do that, you need to give yourself the freedom to do that. While it can be great to have a routine, which is often advocated by many a successful parent, that routine does need to have flexibility written into it to be successful. So whilst a routine can most definitely help you, you need to know the difference between when it is helping you to work with your kids successfully, and when it is hindering you.
A successful routine is one that allows each of your children to thrive while your wife is at work and you are at home looking after them. While some of the obvious needs of feeding and washing will give a loose outline to your day, remember to build into your routine when working with kids goes a little bit astray. If you are getting ready for the school run, it is probably good to build in a certain amount of flexibility into how long it takes your children to get ready.
Or, if you are feeding your children around about the same time each day, make sure that you build in enough time to talk to them about their day. This is really important if your dinner time is the one time when your wife is home from work or the office as it becomes quality time for you as a unit. However, it won’t always be possible to have a family meal every night, and its important to remember that that is ok too.
What To Know About A House Husband – The Bottom Line
Taking the plunge and leaving full time work at an office to become a full time dad or husband, is a big step to make. However, more and more men are leaving their traditional office jobs and doing just that – and loving it too. While they may sacrifice a more stereotypical career, by being a stay-at-home dad they are supporting their wife in their work and it means that their career can prosper instead.
This may not work for all families. However, in set ups where the wife is not only the main breadwinner but incredibly ambitious too, it can be a situation that addresses the needs of each partner in the marriage as well as meaning that children have a parent present much more of the time as opposed to a nanny or childcarer. While some babies and children still thrive without a parent present for much of the day, others do better when their primary care giver is a parent.
A great deal of work around the world has taken place to ensure that the huge societal shift towards gender equality welcomes and embraces fathers who want to spend more time with a daughter or son who has not left for college or university yet. It is seen more and more, even for the traditional full time mom, as a job in itself that should be celebrated and seen as hard work – however fulfilling.
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