Is it a privilege to be able to stay at home and not work?

[Warren DeMontague]

23. Okay, Part II:

Which is not to say "I'm so great, I'm above it all"... but I have spent my life seeking out communities and circles that are open-minded and non-judgmental; this is why I gravitated towards the hippies, in college (in addition to the music and, okay, the fact that they smoked the best pot) Really, the attitudes of people who sniffed or harumphed over my staying at home were never more than a blip- now they strike me as just funny.

I mean, objectively, if the genders in my household were reversed no way in hell would anyone think it was "weird" for me to be the one at home. I think I have a healthy appreciation for my own intellectual capabilities, but compared to my wife, I'm a blithering idiot. Seriously. Not in like a "oh, dad's a bumbling ninny" sitcom sort of way, for real. She's far sharper than me. So at various times it has made perfect sense for her to be the one with the "real" job, and neither of us got particularly hung up on the matter.

In terms of domestic work, etc... there were certainly times when I felt sort of like Jackie Robinson, I felt I had to do everything that much better or I had something to prove. But that was 100% my own trip. And although especially early on my cooking was nothing to write home about. But I mentally compared my own workload to that of the stay-at-home moms I knew... I can't speak for all of them, but I know that while I was doing the majority if not all of the "domestic" stuff- cleaning, laundry, etc. incl child care and diapers, I was also doing all the yard work, the branch trimming, the lawn aeration, that sort of stuff. Most of the SAHMs I knew, their husbands dealt with that on the weekends, or they hired gardeners. So long story short I never felt like I was taking advantage of some awesome deal, work-wise. I have a pretty decent self-appraisal of my own faults; I can be lazy, sure, but I make up for it with furious bouts of getting-lots-of-shit-done... but certainly during the times when I stayed at home I pulled my own share and it absolutely was "work". Hard work, especially with babies.

It's funny, because in one of these discussions, a well-known legendarily toxic and now-banned DU member, in another group, had a Saskatchewan-sized shitfit over the idea that staying home with kids was "a job". Oh, fuck, did she ever get mad about that, with long tirades regarding how sure we'd all love to sit home and eat bon-bons and take calgon baths all day but it's not a real job and of course in "the old days" kids (babies even!) really "raised themselves"

...Yeah.

I've done both. I know a lot of people who've done both. There are advantages- particularly for an anti-social jerk like myself- to being one's own boss and taking care of things on the home front; but most folks I know who've stayed at home have said given the choice they'd see, say, an office gig as the welcome respite. My wife has been up front and honest and said it would have driven her nuts within a very short amount of time. But she also needs to be around people, more than I do. The isolation of it never bugged me, as I know it bugs many stay-at-homes.

But a lot of this stuff, when you get right down to it- and I'm sure some people will get mad at me for saying this- these are battles which need to be fought in our own heads. Lao Tzu or someone claiming to be Lao Tzu made the comment about the man (or woman) who conquers himself (or herself), conquers the world.

Sure, that's happy talk, privilege talk, the talk of SUV driving yuppies who do yoga and read "the secret". But, it's also got some truth. We walk around bounded by these invisible walls and limitations that maybe we didn't put there, but they only exist in our own heads. No one is "stopping" a man from being a stay at home dad by talking shit about him. They're just being assholes.

It's funny, there was another thread about gender expectations and boys growing up. My nephew- perfect example; if I managed to come around in later life to not really caring what other people thought, this kid came right out of the gate with it. He used to wear pink, he broke his arm and got a pink cast... the doctor was like "a pink cast? aren't you worried kids are going to make fun of you?" He didn't care. And guess what- they didn't. He owned it, he just didn't give a shit, he never gave a shit, he wore his not giving a shit like an armored suit.... and the kid still doesn't give a shit.