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Stay-at-home parents have become more common in the last couple of decades for a variety of reasons. As more men and women have chosen to stay home, more awfully sexist myths and assumptions have emerged than ever before. What are the most common sexist assumptions about stay-at-home parents, and what can we do to stop them from becoming a problem?
Here are four of them.
1. You Have to Pick One — Parenthood or Career
You can’t be a career-focused parent and stay at home at the same time — it just doesn’t work that way, right?
Let’s call BS on this one right now.
You can be a stay-at-home parent and still build a fulfilling and lucrative career. This one can apply to both moms and dads. There’s no rule in the book that says you have to give up your career just because you’ve decided to start a family.
This stereotype has been bolstered by the fact that many women do leave their jobs or abandon their careers after they have a child — but in many cases, this ends up being the exception rather than the rule. Women also often face discrimination both while pregnant and after returning to work, leading to slower raises and promotions. When having a kid creates a hostile work environment, it’s time to find a new job.
Parenthood also often has an unintended side effect — entrepreneurship. More and more parents are finding ways to take their skills and start businesses that allow them to work from home, or at least in a more flexible environment that allows them to spend more time with their children as they’re growing. What better way to teach your kids about thinking outside the box than to start your own business from home?
2. Stay-At-Home Dads Are Somehow Unmanly
Being a stay at home dad is often looked down on. In spite of the moves toward equality in recent years, a man being supported by a woman is still somehow a bad thing — like they need to turn in their man card because they’re home changing diapers and taking care of the kids.
This is sexism at its finest, and it comes from both men and women.
When it comes down to it, though, dads make ideal stay-at-home parents, especially for young children. A study found that infants actually respond more favorably to being picked up by their father than they do their mother. During the first five years of life, dad is more influential on how kids interact with the world than mom is, affecting everything from social interactions to play.
Play, even for young kids, is an essential part of growing up. Free play, especially with other children, helps them to develop everything from leadership skills to improved creativity. With dad around to foster playtime, kids can have fun and learn at the same time.
There is nothing unmanly about being a stay-at-home dad. If anything, stepping up and taking care of your kids is probably the manliest thing you can do as a member of the male half of the species.
3. Moms Who Say Home Aren’t/Can’t Be Feminists
This is probably the stupidest assumption we’ve ever read. Basically, if you’re a stay-at-home mom, then you must be trapped in the 1950s, and there’s no way you can actually be a feminist or be in favor of equal rights for women.
Having kids and staying home with them doesn’t mean you have to go all Better Homes and Gardens crazy. In fact, parenthood often becomes the launching point for believing in feminism and equality — especially if you have daughters.
Being a parent is hard enough without letting people plaster you with labels that may or may not even apply to you. Gender equality isn’t just about making more money and being able to do all the same things that men do. It’s about choice. That is the foundation of the concept of equality — the ability to make the same choices about your life as a woman that a man would be able to make about his own life.
This includes being able to choose to stay home with your children — or to have dad stay home with the children while you work on your career. The key here is your ability to choose. Be a feminist. Go to marches. Take your kids along and decorate their strollers with signs. Do whatever your little heart desires — as long as what you do is your choice.
4. Moms Make Less Anyway (i.e., It’s All About Money)
The wage gap sucks. In 2016, women were paid roughly 80% of what the opposite sex made while working in comparable positions. In some states, it’s even worse. New York is better, where women make roughly 89% of what their male counterparts make, but in Louisiana and Utah, women were only making 70% of a man’s salary.
With these statistics, it only makes sense to have mom stay home while dad works, right?
Reading that made us collectively facepalm so hard we’ve all got palm prints on our foreheads now.
Yes, in many cases staying home with the kids is about the money — but it’s not about the money coming in. Instead, it’s about the money going out. The cost of childcare in most of the country is brutal. For someone making minimum wage, it could easily cost them an entire paycheck just to have someone else watch their kids while they work. It kind of defeats the purpose of working if you’re just shelling out for daycare.
We need to fix the wage gap, not pressure moms to stay home because the man in their life makes more. Women are literally two letters — and, one chromosome — away from being men after all. This backward trend of paying women less just because their reproductive organs happen to be on the inside instead of the outside has to stop.
When it comes down to it, men and women will always have someone who looks down on them for staying home with their kids. Pardon our French, but screw them. It’s not about them. It’s about what’s best for you and your kids. Everything else comes second to that.
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