A recent article in The New York Times features Gerard Gousman, a Seattle dad of four sons. The article appears in the March 31, 2024 print edition of the newspaper under the headline “They’re pushing back at the ‘Mr. Mom’ stigma.”
Gerard serves as a board member of The National At-Home Dad Network. He first learned about the organization when he was going for a walk and saw their name on the marquee of the venue that was hosting their annual convention. That was in 2017. This October, Gerard will attend his fourth HomeDadCon.
“Going by the name HomeDadCon, our convention is the second longest-running fatherhood event in the country and still proudly organized by dads for dads.”
– The National At-Home Dad Network
Gerard is angling for HomeDadCon to be hosted in Seattle some year soon, but he says the higher costs here are a barrier as they try to keep the three-day event very affordable.
See also: Dads Should Increasingly Benefit from Flexible Working Arrangements
‘A true community’
Gerard appreciates The National At-Home Dad Network’s commitment to being on the forefront of fatherhood.
He is active in their 3,000+ member Facebook group and enjoys talking with people who live as far away as Hawaii, Israel, and the Netherlands during ‘Dads Lounge’ Zoom meetings. “We’re a true community,” he says.
The National At-Home Dad Network cooperates with other fatherhood-oriented organizations, including the Tacoma-based organization Dads M.O.V.E., one of four dads-focused organizations that have endorsed legislation to establish a Washington state commission on boys and men. Fatherhood, Family, and Relationships would be one of the five focus areas of this proposed commission.
Dads of boys, dads of girls
We asked Gerard, “Do you think the sex of a man’s children has much influence on whether he will be an at-home dad for a time? Is a dad of three daughters equally likely to be an at-home dad as a dad of three sons?”
Here’s his response:
“Dads are perfectly capable of parenting boys and girls. I know at-home dads like me who care for multiple sons, and I know at-home dads who care for multiple daughters. Parenting multiple girls might actually be a little simpler than parenting multiple boys. I do think, though, that the gender of the children can have an influence on a man’s level of confidence being an at-home dad to multiple kids. With men not understanding females as well as they understand males, an at-home dad to multiple sons might have a higher baseline level of confidence than an at-home dad to multiple daughters.”
Statistics on at-home dads
We end this blog post with some statistics included in The New York Times article:
“The percentage of stay-at-home parents who are fathers has risen dramatically over the last three decades. Pew Research Center, using the Census Bureau’s Annual Social and Economic Supplement, published a report showing that almost 1 in 5 American parents who do not work for pay are fathers. From 1989 to 2021 (the latest Pew data), that represented a 64% increase — the result of both rapid growth in the share of fathers who do not work for pay and a slight decrease in the share of mothers who do not work for pay.”