In order to be any kind of success as a stay-at-home dad, you really have to have a certain level of self-confidence that borders on ridiculous. Going to work each day, then coming home self-satisfied with the knowledge that you are earning a paycheck and providing for your family, is all external motivation and reinforcement. Without that, you have to have, essentially, an internal sense of pride in what you are doing and accomplishment in order to take on such a role full-time. It's oxy-moronic in a sense, because having confidence in what you are doing as a parent is frequently the most dangerous thing you could possibly do. Aren't we all just making it up as we go along, to some degree? But having confidence that what you are doing matters every single day is the only thing you have sometimes. Chances are you will never win an award for parenting, or a scholarship, or any sort of critical acclaim (with the possible exception of "world's greatest dad" which is often awarded in t-shirt or coffee mug form). Finding meaning and pride in your successes, your failures, and your attempts from day-to-day is all you got. Personally, when I think of staying at home, my main fear is sometimes that I'll leave no legacy in the world. But then I like to think, every time a kid of mine is (hopefully) good to another person, that's my legacy, even if no one knows it.

Dude, your legacy is real. The legacy of the people whose life is spent serving a corporate master is not.

Women are confident as stay-at-home mothers as men are willing to enter contracts (marriage) with them for reproductive and domestic services. Fatherhood remains unvalued, as is masculine culture in general. Higher paying women do not compete for men for their domestic services. Rather, these women seek and compete for even higher paying men. When the income gap between man and woman is small, men attempt to make up the difference with domestic services. Even when the gap is wide, as is when a man earns 4x the woman's income, modern American men are still expected to share in household duties according to the woman's overly antiseptic cleaning schedules.

"my main fear is sometimes that I'll leave no legacy in the world."

American culture and laws still consider children to be the property of their mother. If your wife dumps you, as they do in the American Six-Year Marriage, your children will be stripped from you while you will be forced to re-enter the workplace to provide two decades of state-mandated child support (alimony in disguise) payments for which delinquency is punishable by incarceration.

A mother's answer is that *her* children are everything in the world to her.

You know, Ian, I really, REALLY feel sorry for you. When my husband asked me to marry him, way back in '76, I told him that he needed to understand that I did NOT 'need' a man in my life - not for emotional support, not for financial support, not for physical support. I would marry him, yes, but I was marrying him because he made me happy. We shared laughter and love and raised two damned fine young men over the next 24 years and not once did any of the issues you obsess over arise. If dishes needed done, whichever of us had time and energy at the moment did them. If he was working 100 hours a week, I did most of the child care; when I was working 100 hours a week, he did most of the child care. The trick is that we were PARTNERS and equals. His earning potential never entered into our relationship - something my mother objected to strongly, in those earlier days. The only thing that mattered was that he made me happy and I made him happy. When he died, one of my sisters-in-law told me she envied me our happiness, that she and my brother didn't have that. I told her that they made decisions when they got married, and decided they wanted 'things'. They had them; he was mayor, she belonged to all the proper clubs, etc. My husband and I made decisions, too. We decided we wanted to be happy! He's been gone 9 years, I've never dated in those years, it probably wouldn't be fair to some poor man (I wouldn't want to live with me!), but Ian, not all women are basing choices on a financial exchange. My sons aren't married, but most of their friends are and none of them made their choices on money either. Some have more, some have less, but several of these couples have passed your magic '6 yr. marriage' and are still happy together. Whatever sad experience led to your bitterness, continuing to nurture that bitterness and anger will ultimately only hurt one person - you. I hope you find someone to love and someone who will love you in return - and that money plays no part!

Ian, I hate to disappoint you, but stay-at-home dads DO get alimony and child support.