First, I LOVE the idea of getting to spend more time with my son. Before I was laid off, I felt this terrible burden that the years were slipping away. I really had only the weekend to spend with him...but only at the expense of things I wanted to do for myself (e.g., read a book, catch a college football game, etc.). But I made the best of it.

Then I lost my job. Didn't like that, but you know what? Being with my son in these early, formative years is more important to me than 10,000 jobs and 10,000 times the pay (OK, I'd work one day a week at that rate and call it quits after a couple of weeks.)

As for manliness, what kind of man thinks it's "girly" to set a strong example for your child? It's REALLY about the peer pressure of men being the breadwinners. That is, if we were, say, "day-trading" at home, making the big bucks, and we said, "Yeah, I work from home--day-trade and keep the kids," no one would have an issue. It's the notion of our WIVES doing the work.

But heads-up, guys--our wives have been out-working us for years now! I know, now that I have to take up the slack! I'd much rather put in a hard day at the office than a regular day of dirty dishes, cooking, homework, etc. Except that by doing that I get to spend time with a little boy that will one day grow up...up...and away, I imagine. Give me these few months, years, to hold him while he can still be held, to kiss him before he thinks that is sissified, to wrestle with him while I am still the big dog....

Sooner or later, a job will come through, and I'll go back to work. But every day I'll be thinking of a little fellow that I used to sit with on the couch and tickle, watch some crazy TV show, and try to teach basic math. My body will be at work, but right now, my body and my heart are where I want to be the most.

To my son, I'm the boss of the world. If I don't make your cut on "macho," too bad. I'm comfortable being a father that gets to be a daddy, too.

Masculinity is what feminity is not.

The unmanliness of staying at home is that women will never select you on the basis of your ability to do common household tasks for the sake of financial efficiency. You're married with kids, so you're safe for a few years. There would be no way a woman would enter a situation in which you are not bringing home dollars. The sexual equation does not permit women to let their vaginas remain unleveraged for favor and fortune from men.

Blokesworth, that is the single most ridiculous thing I've read this week, following a great post. It's so comical I wonder if you're just trolling around here. If you're legitimately trying to make a point, then masculinity is being defined for you by societal norms of the past. The year is 2009. Separate spheres as a theory of social and economic development fell out of favor what, in the late 1800s? Women today want a child-raiser as much or more as they do an earner, because more and more often, women can be earners in today's society. If a woman is completely unskilled, uneducated, then perhaps she has to look for someone who can earn for her. But with an education and the right opportunity, she doesn't need a man to provide money for her -- this leaves her open to look for other qualities she might not have been able to focus on previously, like parenting skills.

Kudos to the original poster for taking full advantage of staying at home with his son and seeing it as a gift, as a positive opportunity. In five years, ten years, thirty years, your son would have no idea what the hell it is you were doing at work day after day. But the time you are spending with him, that is something he will hopefully remember and cherish.

I actually like both responses, however crude the referring to body parts are. I am a teacher and have some summer time off(3 months? keep dreaming....2nd job$$$ and such).

I love that I am in a career that lets me be with my 2 young sons. If my wife made more money and won the bread, I think BB KING..."She makes a lot of money, dont have to worry 'bout a thing..."

But alas, she would not like this idea at all. Most women I know expect men to work and most men I know wish they worked less. 4 x 10hours weeks would be a dream.

Personally, I dont think its the work, women think we stink up there house so they need us to air out....and make a little scratch while you're out there.

iwiwiwa:

But with an education and the right opportunity, she doesn't need a man to provide money for her.

And yet they still do. Almost every woman I've ever known and that my friends have known, confirms this. And most women agree as well. There are very few female doctors dating plumbers- even if they are good with kids.

Women almost always date at their level or above. And a stay at home dad is not above. Two weeks of this experiment is charming. I'm sure she loves how different it is. But two years worth, let's say? A hundred bucks says her ardour would cool quite a bit in that scenario.

Badbone:

Women almost always date at their level or above. And a stay at home dad is not above. Two weeks of this experiment is charming. I'm sure she loves how different it is. But two years worth, let's say? A hundred bucks says her ardour would cool quite a bit in that scenario.

Eh. I still say it's cultural. A couple of thousand years of Western culture in which men had a greater earning capacity, based upon a couple of million years in which men were simply more brutally capable of bringing home the mastodon bacon... it's only in the last couple of decades that women have been allowed to fully demonstrate their breadwinning capabilities, thus freeing some men to develop some stay-at-home nurturing skills. That immense weight of cultural history still weighs upon us and our mating expectations. We arguing here on this forum were all born to parents who grew up in a culture wherein most women were stay-at-home moms, and most men were working men, and people who did not fit within that structure were unusual enough to be noteworthy. That lame Michael Keaton movie "Mr. Mom" was only 26 years ago. With the evolutionarily rapid rise of Women's Liberation (remember when it was still called that?), paralleling the rise of the Civil Rights Movement, it should come as no surprise that many people's philosophical adjustment lags a bit behind the change in the de facto culture. Some people still find interracial marriage repugnant, though that opinion is dying out in the population at large. Just this month, an interracial couple in Louisiana was denied a marriage license, because the Justice of the Peace still clings to an outdated mindset on the topic. In 2009! And that's my larger point: since it is now 2009, the JP's denial of the license (and the mindset behind it) is newsworthy, when it would have been commonplace around the time of my birth.

It may be difficult today for many American women, steeped in our Western male-dominant culture, to imagine a sensitive, nurturing, stay-at-home-dad-type man to be a masculine object of feminine desire. But that's gonna change. It's no longer nearly as transgressive today for, say, a white woman to be attracted to a black man, as it was even thirty years ago. Similarly, the well-turned-out metrosexual man who gets laid every weekend in 2009 would have been derided as a foppish sissy in my boyhood, let alone in, say, 1943. And the mastodon-hunters would have awarded him as a booby-prize "girlfriend" to the most junior member of their hunting pack. Since every passing decade takes us farther from the days when women needed to be fed, clothed, and protected by big, strong, worldly men because the women weren't strong enough, educated enough, or vicious enough to do it for themselves, these stereotypically masculine traits have diminished in importance, and before you know it, will no longer automatically attract the babes. Mark my words, dudes, and neglect to develop your sensitive, intellectual side at your peril.

Well said, Mr. Petersen. Although I don't identify with the "most women were stay-at-home moms" part (my mom and most of my friends' moms worked outside of the home), I agree with the rest of your post. It's gonna take some time for cultural "norms" to even out.

Seems like there's a common thread in the thoughts of those that think that all women are looking for some life partner at or above their own status. Badbone, you and blokesworth both seem to think that being a stay-at-home parent is a product of an inability to do anything outside the home professionally. I'm sorry to say, that's just no longer true. I think there was a time when that was the case. That time probably ended prior to the 1970s. Today having a stay-at-home parent is a sort of rare luxury. The stay-at-home parents I know -- myself included -- are not unemployable. Overall, it's a pretty well-educated bunch, and most, if not all, have good work experience. It's just a combination of valuing the opportunity to have time with your child, and having one parent who is fortunate enough to have a job that pays sufficiently to support this system.

I don't agree with the comment that women date at their level or above. The men I dated and the man I eventually married had to have more skills then I do. Now let me back up and tell that I make almost twice what my husband does. I'm and engineer and he is a rancher.

And I have a lot of skills. For instance I can change a flat tire and have on many occassions. However, I could never respect a man that didn't know how to change a tire or expected me to do it while he watched. Most women want their romantic partner to be masculine and competent. To know that he need be he is capable to taking charge and of taking care of his family.

I also have great skills. I can spell "than" and don't confuse it with "then".

Why, then, do 99.5 of all cultures have men in the bread winning role and not the nurturing one?

I agree its learned. I agree its genetic.

Putting being human into political categories...decent motive(fairness), decent intention(equality)....is off base.

F' it, I passed my English 101 and 102...you fools duke it out.....

"It may be difficult today for many American women, steeped in our Western male-dominant culture, to imagine a sensitive, nurturing, stay-at-home-dad-type man to be a masculine object of feminine desire."

What about Asia where most "people" live....

YES................Amen. Well written, well thought, well....right on. "Today having a stay-at-home parent is a sort of rare luxury."

Seems like there's a common thread in the thoughts of those that think that all women are looking for some life partner at or above their own status. Badbone, you and blokesworth both seem to think that being a stay-at-home parent is a product of an inability to do anything outside the home professionally. I'm sorry to say, that's just no longer true. I think there was a time when that was the case. That time probably ended prior to the 1970s. Today having a stay-at-home parent is a sort of rare luxury. The stay-at-home parents I know -- myself included -- are not unemployable. Overall, it's a pretty well-educated bunch, and most, if not all, have good work experience. It's just a combination of valuing the opportunity to have time with your child, and having one parent who is fortunate enough to have a job that pays sufficiently to support this system. look up one