"It's almost like I have a job, but I don't get paid": fathers at home reconfiguring work, care, and masculinity

Fathering, Fall, 2004 by Andrea Doucet

A similar story is provided by Andrew, a water supply engineer whose wife has a demanding job that involves international travel. He says: "I was also thinking about getting out of the business anyway. This is not the kind of thing I want to do for the rest of my life. We thought two years. Ideally three." In the end, Andrew stayed home for two years and then went back to a teachers' college when his children were both in school.

Within this group of in-transition fathers, some had lost their jobs, others went through a serious illness that forced them to re-think their career paths at the same time as they were juggling expensive childcare arrangements, and still others found that their jobs were "dead-end" ones that did not justify two stressful jobs and the high cost of childcare. While some men took a break altogether in order to concentrate on the demands of childcare while simultaneously preparing for a new career, others, as described in the next section, took on part-time work or moved their jobs into a more home-based setting.

FATHERS JUGGLING PAID WORK AND CARING: "MY SHOP Is IN THE GARAGE"

Of the 70 stay-at-home fathers in the study, 30 fathers were employed in part-time jobs or were working flexible hours from a home-based workplace. Within this group, one-third of the fathers were also in transition between careers but were working part-time to supplement the family income. Shahin, a 43-year-old Iranian Canadian, provides a good example of the home-working father. Shahin began staying at home with his son, now six years old, when his wife, a French-Canadian lawyer, went back to work after a four-month maternity leave. A self-employed cabinetmaker, he has a workshop in his garage. In reflecting upon how he and his wife came to the decision that he stay at home, he says:

   Well, the decision was, I think, rather simple because my wife
   makes more money than I do, and I did not want my son to be
   raised without at least one parent at home ... So the decision was
   made on that basis, based on economical feasibility. It just seemed
   more logical for me to stay home, especially since I have my own
   business. I could do at least part-time work.

In his long descriptions about his routine when his son was an infant, he frequently invoked the way in which he juggled work at home and childcare:

   My shop is in my garage. It's rather practical. So I had the monitor
   in the shop.... He had this rocking chair ... you know, you put the
   baby in there, and it goes back and forth. He loved to sleep in it
   and it was 45 minutes, I think, the cycle. So I used to run every
   half an hour and crank it up.

Shahin and 29 other fathers kept their hand in paid work through part-time or home-based working. The range of occupations and creative flexibility within this group was astounding. Of the 30 stay-at-home fathers who work part-time, several diverse examples can be highlighted. Sam is a driving instructor two evenings a week and Saturdays. Jamal, a Somali immigrant father, takes care of his two sons during the day while his wife studies English, and he works nights conducting surveys by phone. Brandon, a sole-custody father, has balanced the raising of his three sons with running his organic farm. Jerome, at home for the past 11 years, works about eight hours a week as office manager in his wife's pediatrician practice in a small Nova Scotia town. Cameron has taken in a foster son, which "allows me to stay at home and look after the kids. Otherwise, we couldn't survive on the one salary." Finally, Harry at home for the past nine years in rural Ontario has taken on many different jobs: "I've helped the neighbors with the hay and, well, ... I do cleaning for two hours a week at the church in Griffith ... I have my chickens and the garden.... And last year I looked after a couple of other kids in the morning--well, I got paid for putting them all on the bus."