Stay-At-Home Dads Still Struggle With Diapers, Drool, Stigma And Isolation
It's hard to find other stay-at-home dads to hang out with, and working men worry you'll hit on their stay-at-home wives. Meanwhile, bosses still expect new fathers to work full-time. What's changed?
The number of men in the United States who are full-time, stay-at-home parents has risen steadily in recent decades, from maybe a million or so in 1984, according to a Pew Research Center estimate, to roughly double that in 2014.
That's still much smaller than the number of stay-at-home moms, of course, and many of the challenges these dads face are universal to parenting.
"It's a tough job," says Ben Sanders, who's raising two young boys in Haymarket, Va. His kids are 3 ½ and 6 ½ years old. "There are no breaks. It's 24/7. There's no vacation. You can't get sick."
The amount of work entailed "is crazy," Sanders says. "You're on your feet constantly, you know — shopping, laundry, errands [and] running kids here and
