Shannon Carpenter - The Ultimate Stay-At-Home Dad: Your Essential Manual for Being an Awesome Full-Time Father

What comes to mind when you hear the term stay-at-home dad? Let me help you out. Its either a lazy dude or Mr. Mom, and neither are pleasant.

The first one is a guy who hasnt bathed in a year and wears a brown sweater that has holes around the neckline. There are kids somewhere in a dirty and destroyed house. Dinner is never on the table at six, the wife works three jobs to support his ass, and occasionally he will tear himself away from World of Warcraft to ask for beer money.

If thats not the one, then your mind goes to the 1983 movie Mr. Mom, starring Michael Keaton. I have a soft spot for that movie because my own wife is in advertising, and its funny as hell. I get it. But the term Mr. Mom oozes with this vision of a dad without a manly bone in his body. It implies that his masculinity has been stripped and his balls have been replaced by fallopian tubes. Hes no longer a guy because he has decided to take on the role of raising children. In short, the term supposes that he cant be Dad because he is now Mom.

Ive been an at-home dad for twelve years, and I can safely tell you all of that is complete and total bullshit.

Thats not who we are. Thats not even close.

The clich in the world is that an at-home dad is lazy and worthless. At least, that is the mental picture that dads wrestle with because of the looks and reactions we get when we respond to What do you do for a living? But as dads, we do not have to accept this preconceived notion because it is not true. We are worth every penny to our family. I used to answer What do you do for a living? with hesitation, but Im now confident in my role and in our decision as a family for me to be an at-home dad.

Brock Lusch, father of two

At-home dads are salesmen, IT specialists, and marketing managers. We are doctors and lawyers, mechanics and electricians. Some have college degrees, and some dont. We are blue collar and white collar, big house and small house, bearded with tattoos and clean shaven. Some ride motorcycles; others ride imaginary unicorns, to their daughters delight. Some drink whiskey and beer, and some abstain with a vitaminwater.

We can chop wood with huge axes and run a sewing machine to make special pillows for our newborn sons. Some of us are loud and outgoing, and others are shy and withdrawn. We are aggressive and passive, sure of ourselves and not.

We are every guy youve ever met.

As you read this book, youll start seeing how diverse stay-at-home dads really are. We come from every walk of life, every religion, every race, every orientation. There are fathers of twins and triplets, fathers of trans children, fathers of special needs kids. Some are newer guys with a years worth of experience, and some have been doing this for decades. This is now your community and we are here to help, to give you a sense of the importance of what you do, and to teach you everything we know about being an at-home dad. There are dads with wives, dads with husbands, and dads with partners. In this book, you will see yourself.

In these pages, Ill focus on the one unifying factor that brings us all together. We are Dad. Are we Mr. Mom? Only if we can start calling Mom Mrs. Dad. See how well that shit plays out. Stay-at-home dads are a community bigger than you could possibly know, but closer than you ever thought.

There are over two million of us in the US alone, and that is using a very strict definition. Those dads who have part-time jobs arent officially at-home dads, which the rest of us say is bullshit. Driving for a rideshare company on the weekend does not exclude you from the club.

We are the dads who dont see Mom as a problem, the kid as an obstacle, and fatherhood as an unfortunate side effect of sex. Being Dad isnt something that someone else can do. Its what we do. We are the primary caregivers of our children. Period.

Those are the men you are joining. Millions. Say it with me: millions. The hero from the Disney movie The Incredibles 2, Mr. Incredible? At-home dad. The movie star Cary Grant did a stint in the parenting trenches. Rick Moranis? At-home dad. Thats right, Dark Helmet himself is an at-home dad. May his greatness live forever.

Now we can begin to understand how to answer the question What do you do for a living?

I am an excellent storyteller.

Im a stunt car driver out in LA, I said to the very nice lady at my wifes high school reunion. Well, I guess you can call it Hollywood, but it sounds so pretentious. Know what I mean?

Are you really? she asked, obviously impressed. She twirled the champagne in her glass.