The Daddy Shift: How Stay-at-Home Dads, Breadwinning Moms, and Shared Parenting Are Transforming the American Family

257 Pages·2009·1.15 MB·English

by  Jeremy Adam Smith

The Daddy Shift
How Stay-at-Home Dads,
Breadwinning Moms, and Shared Parenting
Are Transforming the American Family
Jeremy Adam Smith
Beacon Press
Boston
Beacon Press
25 Beacon Street
Boston, Massachusetts 02108-2892
www.beacon.org
Beacon Press books
are published under the auspices of
the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.
© 2009 by Jeremy Adam Smith
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
12 11 10 09 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is printed on acid-free paper that meets the uncoated paper
ANSI/NISO specifications for permanence as revised in 1992.
Text design and composition by Wilsted & Taylor Publishing Services
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Smith, Jeremy Adam.
The daddy shift : how stay-at-home dads, breadwinning moms, and shared
parenting are transforming the American family / Jeremy Adam Smith.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
isbn-13: 978-0-8070-2120-0 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Househusbands—United States. 2. Stay-at-home fathers—United States.
3. Working mothers—United States. 4. Work and family—United States. I. Title.
HQ756.6.S65 2009
306.3'6150973—dc22 2008047404
This book is dedicated to my father and to my son.

A Note about Names and People
Unless otherwise indicated in the endnotes, all quotations ap-
pearing in this book (of both parents and researchers) come from
personal interviews. The couples I interviewed requested varying
degrees of anonymity. Some agreed to let me use their full names;
some asked me to drop or change their last names; others (“Mike
Rothstein” and “Lisa Holt” in chapter 3 and the “Hoffman” fam-
ily in chapter 8) requested that I change their entire name and alter
certain personal details. In every case, I obeyed people’s wishes, if
they expressed any.
Some readers might notice that even though I write about my
family life, my wife appears in these pages only in name, not as
a full-blown character. This is simply because she is not a public
person and she does not wish for her personal choices and feelings
to be subjected to public scrutiny. I obeyed her wish as well, even
if it gives the mistaken impression of her absence.
As a result the autobiographical passages primarily concern my
own responses as a caregiver, which I felt needed to be there in
order to complete this snapshot of male caregiving in the early
twenty-first century. The reader should not construe this to mean
my wife is unimportant to me. On the contrary, I love her and my
son more than words can express.

Contents
Introduction Twenty-first-century Dad ix
Part I The Fathers of Yesterday and Today
1 A Stay-at-home Dad’s History
of North America 3
2 Searching for Role Models:
Ed and Rachelle’s Story 30
3 Stay-at-home Economics, or
Five Myths of Caregiving Fatherhood 51
4 Searching for Community: Chien’s Story 78
5 Interlude: Now You See It,
Now You Don’t 92
Part II The Dads of Tomorrow
6 Returning to Glory: Ta-Nehisi’s Story 105
7 The Astonishing Science of Fatherhood, or
Three More Myths about Male Caregiving 120
8 Searching for Heroism:
Kent and Misun’s Story 146
9 Conclusion: Remember the Future 162
Epilogue Another Fatherhood Is Possible 188
Acknowledgments 192
Notes 194
Index 227

Introduction
Twenty-first-century Dad
In 2004 my son Liko was born. Everything—the tree outside the
window, the dreams I had at night—changed.
For the first year of his life, my wife Olli stayed home with
Liko. Then she went back to work and I quit my job, joining the
ranks of caregiving dads.
Now it was just the two of us boys, and it was scary. Liko, a
confirmed breast addict, could not nap without his mother. When
I would lay him down, he’d wail inconsolably, relentlessly, reach-
ing out to me. But when I picked him up, he’d kick and arch his
back, his little hands pushing against my chest. This would go on
for hours.
I’d put him in the stroller and walk. He’d cry and fall asleep,
but if I stopped—in a bookstore, a coffee shop—he’d wake and cry
again, so I soon learned to keep moving through our San Fran-
cisco neighborhood, sticking to the side streets, going up the hills
and down, up and down.
Time slowed, and with every minute I’d feel more and more
isolated, more and more anxious. I wondered: “Is my life now no
more than this?” I’d see people laughing in a picture window and
want to be one of them.
In time, I learned to let that go, let myself get lost. On foggy
days the hills of the city floated around us like deserted islands, the
ix