Five men gather on a weekday in the family room at Ian Sandland’s home.
Once the pleasantries are over, talk soon turns to sports. As the men talk, one bounces his infant daughter on his lap. Another wiggles a rattle in front of an attentive 3-month-old. The other watches as his excited 2-year-old runs from the family room to the makeshift playroom in the formal living room in Plano, Texas.
The doorbell rings and Kirk Banfield enters, carrying 10-month-old Parker.
“Sorry I’m late,” he says, sinking into a couch. “We got all ready and then he pooped.”
“Aaah,” the men say almost in unison. They understand. As stay-at-home dads, they know the unpredictability of life with children. That is why they gather at least once a week, meeting at each other’s homes for play groups. While their children play, the men talk. They share parenting tips. They discuss sports and they plan outings for their children.
The two-hour sessions help ease the isolation they sometimes feel when they are home alone. It’s a relief from the shunning they sometimes face from stay-at-home moms, who don’t quite know what to make of them. Besides, they say, sometimes they just need some guy talk.
“I see this as a healthy way for me to really enjoy the overall experience of being a stay-at-home dad,” says John Kiburz, who helped found the At-Home Dads of Greater Dallas and is the father of 15-month-old Sarah. “I wanted the benefits for my daughter and I wanted the camaraderie for me.”
The group, he says, came about after he talked to Bruce Drobeck, a stay-at-home dad who organized a similar Dallas/Ft. Worth organization for men years earlier. Kiburz surfed the Internet, found other men in his Plano neighborhood and invited them one day last August to meet at an ice cream store with their kids.
Twelve men showed up and the group was official. Now there are 20 fathers on the roster. And while some of the men come from Denton or Rowlett, most live in Plano.
The men say they think Plano has a concentration of such dads because of its many white-collar households with plenty of young children.
More Top Picks Best Short Throw Projectors For Small Rooms
Kiburz created what Drobeck says he has always wished for: a neighborhood-based organization where the men have organized play groups, a guys’ night out and a monthly get-together where the men barbecue and chat while the kids romp.
“It’s fathering and friendship,” says Kiburz. “A lot of us are first-time parents, and we don’t know everything. So we cross-pollinate. You go to someone else’s house and you see how they safety-proofed.”
No one knows exactly how many stay-at-home dads exist, although the U.S. Census Bureau puts the figure at about 2 million nationwide. According to the Families and Work Institute of New York City, the numbers are much lower, closer to 100,000. One reason for the discrepancy, experts say, is that the numbers may have been higher at the beginning of the decade when some men found themselves as primary caretakers after losing their jobs.
In recent years, a robust economy has chipped away at those numbers. Instead, men who are now home with their children are more likely to be like the Plano dads. They say they and their wives knew that they wanted one parent to stay home with the children, and the men were fortunate enough to be that parent.
“There isn’t as much stigma about this as there once was,” says Drobeck. “I think we have a younger generation of guys coming along that just doesn’t have the same attitudes about it, although they are still the minority.”
Some of their wives are executives, psychologists, lawyers and consultants, placed on the fast track and in jobs with attractive salaries and benefits. For some of the couples, the choice was easy–if their wives made more money, had better career paths and were willing, it’s the men who chose to stay home.
Terry Kwasniak was once a property manager. But when Matthew, his son, was born five years ago, he and his wife, Kathy, agreed he would stay home and she would work as an insurance consultant.
At first, Kathy Kwasniak says, she feared her husband wouldn’t be able to handle being home all day with the baby. She soon learned otherwise.
“He just picked right up and did great,” she says.
After work, Kathy Kwasniak often comes home to dinner on the table and the laundry already done. It might seem like they’ve adapted well to their roles, but the couple has made adjustments along the way.
“At first I was like Mommy dearest,” she says. “I’d tell him don’t use wire hangers on my sweaters, until I realized that he was doing the best he can. You have to say OK, am I going to nag all the time because it’s not my way, or do I just accept that it’s his way of doing it?”
His way, she says, enhanced their lives.