In Praise of the Work-from-Home Dad

I met one of my favorite neighbors and her family at the pool this afternoon. I was puzzled for a moment when I saw that her husband was there. On a Thursday. I’m so used to the idea that husbands go off to work that when I run into a work-from-home dad, I’m always caught momentarily off guard.

It turns out that this is a regular lunch-time activity during the summer break. My friend packs a lunch and their whole family goes to the neighborhood pool or park for an hour. He plays with the kids, chats with his wife, and has a bite to eat before heading back home to his office and getting back to work.His wife told me that they have breakfast together in the morning and dinner at night. He has the flexibility to go to sporting practices and special events.While she also talked about adjusting to the reality of his being home all the time and that the kids had to be quiet outside his office, I got the feeling that neither one of them would change a thing.

He had a relationship with his children that I wished my own children could have. Because he is there to see them and really be a part of their lives, he knows them in ways that most dads don’t get the opportunity to know their children.

It used to be this way in most families. Craftsmen and tradesmen often set up workshops next to or near their homes because it was just more practical.When our country was largely agrarian (that’s farming y’all), dads worked at home in the fields and their children worked beside them. While I’m not an advocate of child labor (but some people around here do need to pick up their socks), I’m beginning to believe that we lost something when dads started going off to work.

Most of the men I know don’t have the luxury of working from home. They leave early and get home late. The majority of fathers we know are working 60-80 hours a week. If they’re lucky, they have free time on the weekends in which to try to get to know their children. And the children as losing out because of it.

Back then, children got to see up close every day what being a man looked like. They had examples to follow. And because dads aren’t moms (thank goodness), those children got the benefit of parenting from both parents. By and large that doesn’t happen today. If dads still live at home, they don’t seem to be there very often.

Which brings me back to this new phenomena of work-from-home dads. The technology that took fathers out of the home to the office has progressed to the point of coming full circle and making it possible for them to come back home again. If the kids at the pool today showed me anything, this is a very good trend.

The look on my friend’s face and the whooping shrieks of laughter coming from her husband and children, made me hope that this is one trend that is here to stay. And that it’s catching. Please can it be catching….