I Have been Home With the Kids For a Year…

This week’s “guest” blog entry is from NYC Dads Group member, Josh Kross. If you are an active member of the group, you know this guy well. For those of you who don’t – he is a confident, at-home father of three kids (5, 2, and 6 mos.), an intelligent guy, and brash at times. You can find some of his rants like the one below at The Angry SAHD.

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while. I’ve actually been
meaning to start my blog for a year, and this is the appropriate post
to celebrate the first anniversary of not starting it.

As of last week, I’ve been home with the kids for a year.

For an entire year, my only customers have been my kids and my wife.

For an entire year, I’ve never had to eat lunch at my desk. (This is
not completely true, but only because I was watching a movie during a
naptime).

For an entire year, the only “organic growth” I had to worry about was
on the inside of a size three Pampers.

For an entire year, I’ve finally felt like I had an impact at the end
of the day.

Rewind a little. I have a master’s degree. I have worked 100-hour
7-day weeks for months before. I am not someone trying to shirk work.
At some point, however, it becomes clear that the type of work
matters a lot less than the type of life you have.
Living in NYC, this decision was not just about lifestyle, but
finances. Childcare is expensive, and we could have chosen for me to
find a new job working 50-60 hour a week and pay for childcare to
break even. It didn’t make any sense though. I’d much rather spend
100 hours a week, 7-days a week, making sure my kids get the
attention, education, and fun they deserve.

As Father’s day recently approached, there were countless articles
about dads, filled with comment after comment about the feminization
and “de-cavemanning” of the modern father. In particular, this is
aimed at Stay-at-Home-Dads. While there is a societal shift coming,
potentially (fingers-crossed) making the single-income household more
common, there are certainly some people, mostly men, who find this an
opportunity to mock a lifestyle that has worked fantastically for us,
and many others.

If sitting at your desk looking at Excel all day is what defines a man
for you, so be it. If knowing that tomorrow you might get fired, or
might have to fire someone gets your blood going, have fun. If you
need to put on dress shoes and leave early in the morning to put hair
on your chest, have at it. If that’s what makes you feel manly, I’m
good with that.

For an entire year, at home with my kids, I’ve never felt more like a man.