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Being A Home Dad...How To Enjoy The Experience

Guest post by: Roy Derrick

Article Overview: With women now often being able to earn more money than their male partners, it is not surprising than currently one in seven dads are the main child carers, but is this really a win, win situation?

Being A Home Dad...How To Enjoy The Experience

With women now often being able to earn more money than their male partners, it is not surprising than currently one in seven dads are the main child carers, but is this really a win, win situation?

Childcare can be a very difficult balancing act. Do you both continue your careers and pay a large part of those earnings for childcare or is it wiser for the higher earner to continue to work and for the lower earner of the partnership to give up their job to care for the child, even if this means becoming a stay at home dad.

Men currently have more rights when it comes to childcare than they did in the past.

Fathers now have rights to request more flexible working hours at any time if they have children under the age of sixteen. Anyone applying for the leave must request it in writing to their employer and be able to show how it could actually work in practise. Despite this, many dads fear asking for more flexible hours in case their commitment gets questioned or it affects their promotion.

They can also now take longer periods of paternity leave, allowing them the share the leave with their partner. This can be advantageous both emotionally, if the dad wants more time to bond with their newborn and can also make sense financially if the mum is able to earn more money than the dad.

In the same way it can make more financial sense for the dad to also become a permanent stay at home dad, but is this the ideal situation for home dads?

Many men, whilst enjoying the childcare role, often feel less masculine and find the role harder than actually working. Many will have taken on the role reluctantly, secretly wishing that they could earn more money so that they could be the main breadwinner.

Fathers now also have rights to request more flexible working hours at any time if they have children under the age of sixteen. Anyone applying for the leave must request it in writing to their employer and be able to show how it could actually work in practise. Despite this, many dads fear asking for more flexible hours in case their commitment gets questioned or it affects their promotion.

Many home dads feel isolated with many feeling self conscious with their new role given that society is programmed to think that a man’s role is to be the breadwinner for the family and that childcare is a role for women.

One way for a home dad to feel less isolated is by joining groups, such as playgroups, with other home dads. There are now some playgroups that have been founded by stay at home dads that offer the opportunity to meet other dads who are in the same situation. This is ideal as there will be more in common to talk about like sport and male banter. This way the children still benefit from mixing with other children while the men enjoy socialising too.

For those dads who still miss working there are many work from home opportunities that would provide extra income from home.There are many stay at home jobs available including working freelance. Many professions offer the opportunity to become freelance i.e. becoming self employed allowing you to work flexible hours based around your own needs. These include writing and copywriting ( you could even start off writing blogs for fun using stay at home dads forums ),web design, graphic design, illustrator or even a translator if you are fluent in another language.

There are many other work from home ideas offering part time work from home. These include many working from home on line opportunities which can reach a global audience. You will need to be cautious though before committing to any of these opportunities to ensure that the opportunity is genuine.

There are also various home courses available that can offer training on how to earn money from home successfully.

To close, there is no right or wrong way to be a home dad. The most important thing is enjoy the experience. For some that will be mean childcare being the sole career whilst for others it will involve creating a healthy balance between caring for the child and earning an income from home at the same time. Either way it a role to be proud of regardless of whether you are a woman or a man.

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Article Tags: earn money from home, earn more money, extra income, home dad, home dads, part time work from home, stay at home dad, stay at home dads, stay at home jobs, work from home ideas, work from home opportunities, working from home online



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