Why being a stay-at-home dad was hard

By Jason Hahn in parenting — Nov 18, 2024

It's already been more than a year and a half since I ended my term as a stay-at-home dad (SAHD), so I guess I have enough perspective to look back and reflect on the four-and-a-half most difficult and wonderful years of my life.

I tell people that my role as a SAHD was the hardest job I've ever had, and I mean it with every fiber of my being. And that's what I'll aim to convey here, partly as a way for me to process that meaningful experience and partly so that this can be of some help, encouragement or interest to someone out there. Maybe this can be helpful for someone thinking about becoming a stay-at-home parent (SAHP); maybe this can be helpful for someone looking to be a better partner or friend to a SAHP; maybe this can just be an interesting read.

How it happened

When my daughter, Brianna, was born, I had a pretty good hunch that I was headed toward a severance package. An acquisition of most of our company's assets was in the works, and I had received enough clues about my options. So for about the first eight months of being a father, I was a dead man walking, so to speak.

Once I received my severance package, my wife and I agreed that I'd be the primary caretaker for Brie until around the time it ended. A few months after my severance payouts ended, we began thinking about day care options for our daughter — and that's when the COVID-19 lockdown happened.

After the transition to pandemic mode and all the from-home video calls and work Mom had to handle, we agreed that I'd extend my role as SAHD.

To make things easier for me to process and for you to read, I'll break this down into four sections: physical, mental, social and emotional.

The Physical

Knee soreness, etc.

For much of my life, my fine metabolism, slender frame and relatively problem-free health record masked the truth: I'm not a very fit person. And while I noticed a very sobering decline in athleticism over the course of my 30s, nothing wreaked havoc on my frame more than being a SAHD. To be more specific, I never had back or knee pain until my daughter's well-being became my full-time job.

Caring for Brie was a daily grind, especially before she began preschool. Here's just a sampling of the taxing day-to-day activities that come to mind:

loading and unloading the stroller
loading and unloading my daughter into the car seat
loading and unloading my daughter into the stroller
lugging around the diaper bag
taking afternoon strolls in hot weather (this one actually kept me in decent shape)
walking around with my daughter in a carrier strapped to my chest
lifting my daughter many times a day for a myriad of reasons
holding my daughter many times a day for a myriad of reasons
contorting my body to pick up, clean, move and otherwise do things while holding my daughter in my arms or the carrier
stooping down to her level on the ground for a variety of reasons and, of course, getting back up again
cleaning up...everything

Nearly every day, from waking to slumbering, was filled with nonstop action and consideration, even when Brie was down for one of her naps. Often as soon as she was asleep, I'd get dressed and rush out to a local grocery store, praying she wouldn't wake up while I wasn't home and during one of Mom's many video calls. If a grocery run wasn't necessary, I'd sometimes clean up or take care of other errands at home. And every now and then, on days when I was too weary to feel guilty, I'd lie on the couch and let myself fall asleep until she woke up again.

When Brie was old enough to attend preschool, my days were freed up a bit. But I was driving about 30-40 minutes each way for drop-offs and pickups, which was exhausting. The five-or-so child-free hours I had at home were mostly occupied by chores and errands, with short windows for showers, reading, @briesbookshelf and, on occasion, power naps. So, no, it wasn't exactly five days a week at the spa.

"Playing" is hard

To directly address what's mentioned in the title of this post, I want to make one thing clear:

Playing with an infant or toddler is incredibly draining — if you're making the effort to stay fully engaged and vigilant (i.e., without staring at your phone or otherwise not paying attention). And even if you aren't fully engaged, you're still tethered to a little speechless human who needs to be protected and tended to for hours on end and doesn't exactly do things you want to do or the way you want to do them.

And while you can lean on windows of screentime when your child is a bit older, you can't (shouldn't?) really do that with infants and young toddlers. Assuming you love your child, the only thing on the menu is constant engagement and attention so their development isn't hindered by your lack of energy or care, and that's a tough game to play day in and day out.

So even if being a SAHD was just about playing with my kid all day, that would still be an extraordinary undertaking deserving acclaim, not a condescending or unwittingly dismissive tone.

The Mental

Never alone

Beyond the physical anxieties of being a SAHD lies a host of mental strains, which often overlap with the physical aspects of the role. For starters I'll point to the utter lack of genuine alone time, which matters an extra bit for those of us afflicted with introversion.

Since I didn't have help and Brie didn't spend any time in day care, she was with me from the moment she woke up until the moment she finally went down (I largely took care of baths and bedtime). Add the height of the pandemic and all the additional worries and burdens that came with that and I really didn't have time to myself, save for my solo runs to the grocery store, Target and other errand-focused destinations.

So I'm not going to sugarcoat it: During my 4 1/2 years of SAHD life, I lost much of my sense of self. For stretches I lost it completely, and for others I merely grew numb to my own needs and wants. To be honest, I don't know if I've fully gotten it back.

The whispering

When I did have windows of time (e.g., during Brie's naps when I didn't have any errands to run), I would sometimes lie down or do something else that was mindless and purely for enjoyment. But there was always a bogeyman hovering over my shoulder, whispering into my ear:

"Don't you think you should be doing something productive right now? This...parenting thing...is your job, after all. What have you really done to earn this personal time? There's always something to do, isn't there? I'm not sure you're really entitled to this break."

Maybe it's just my disposition and predilection for poisoning my own thoughts, but that voice was always rattling inside me. Looking back I can see how the ever-looming shadow of guilt absolutely sapped me of freedom and autonomy, even during well-earned and completely justifiable downtime.

A crushing ambition

Despite the physical wear and tear each day and the mental pressures squeezing me dry, I was still motivated to go above and beyond for my daughter, to push through whatever walls stood before me to make certain days and moments better than I physically and mentally felt I could. And, well, even this well-meaning desire was a millstone on my psyche at times, whether because of a failure to adequately carry out those desires or because of the resulting weariness after successfully going the extra mile.

I don't mean to be overly dramatic about this, but at the levels of exhaustion I was sometimes working through, even thoughts of going above and beyond were crushing. I think this was because, in my woeful mind, letting those thoughts in meant also letting in ominous silhouettes of failure. And at the end of a long day, the last thing I wanted to take to bed was a sense that I had squandered a day with my daughter.

Isolation amplified

Being a SAHD can be incredibly isolating and lonely, and being a SAHD during the pandemic meant this aspect of things was dialed up quite a bit. I won't bring this up again and again throughout this section, but I hope you'll understand the impact of lockdown life on everything that follows.

By definition, a SAHD is a bit of an oddity, though by some recent figures, much less so than before. Once I took a step into this role, I found that I was, in a meaningful sense, leaving all my male friends behind. I noticed that it was easier for stay-at-home moms (SAHMs) I knew to find other SAHMs with whom they could grab a meal or schedule a playdate. As a (very shy and reclusive) SAHD, I never even dared think of grabbing a meal with a SAHM or scheduling a playdate with a SAHM and their children. And, no, I didn't know any other long-term SAHDs in my immediate circle of acquaintances.

Work talk

On the rare occasions I had to enjoy a hangout with my friends, I felt a perceptible chasm between our lives. Their conversations would, naturally, drift into the topic of work, to which I had nothing to contribute. On the rare occasion someone asked how my day-to-day was going, I found it difficult to explain my "9 to 5" in relatable terms that weren't either so generic as to be uninteresting and untrue or so detailed as to be uninteresting and desperate for understanding. So I often kept my answers brief and general.

But it wasn't just a matter of topics; it was a matter of how little I expected a conversation partner to sympathize with what I had to say about being a SAHD. A working dad has an easy time relating to another working dad talking about work and family because it's such a shared, universal experience. Despite differences in industry, role and skill, there's a shared vocabulary, context and struggle that makes superficial or in-depth talk comprehensible.

I didn't find that very easily as a SAHD talking with a working dad, nor did I expect to. So I'd often leave gatherings with a slight sense that the connections I was used to making over familiar topics weren't found or even available to me anymore.

"I'm so jealous of you"

This inability to feel properly understood by people around me was magnified by being actively misunderstood by people around me. One run-in (out of a few similar ones) comes to mind: I was walking past an acquaintance who asked what I was up to these days. I explained that I was a SAHD. His response: "Oh man, I'm so jealous of you. I wish I got to stay home and play with my kid all day."

I count myself a fairly stoic person, and while I usually just laughed off those exchanges and tried to avoid steering conversations into self-focused "Actually..." territory, I can't deny that I found myself disheartened after each such instance. It set me off on a spiral of unhealthy thoughts about how people viewed me, my self-worth, whether this was a professional hole out of which I'd have trouble digging...

But at the end of each of these unproductive exercises, I'd always ground myself in my motivation: my love for my daughter and my wife. And whenever I found that sure footing, my care for all those concerns disappeared, leaving behind a self-assured defiance and vision of my life at that moment. I took pride in what I was doing, and no amount of misunderstanding would ever change that.

The Emotional

The dreaded question

"So when do you think you'll work again?"

This was one of the most frequently asked questions I heard during my tenure as a SAHD, and it was probably the one that created the most internal turmoil. Don't get me wrong: I don't see anything objectively wrong with that question. I understood why people asked it. But what I ultimately heard after the simple query was pushed through my emotional filter was:

"What you're doing now is sweet and all, but it surely can't be taken seriously. This is a temporary frivolity not meant to last too long. So when are you planning on being serious again?"

Do I think this is actually what people meant when they asked that question? Of course not. But I always felt that question more than I heard it, and it evoked a mix of emotions ranging from sorrow at being reminded that this precious time with my daughter wouldn't last forever, discouragement that what I was doing now would never be seen as enough or serious, and insecurity about not quite knowing my answer.

"thx"

Speaking of work, one of the small things I missed about working in a corporate environment was recognition. In a traditional white-collar work setting, the appreciation you receive can range from the small (e.g., "thx" in a quick email reply) to the big (e.g., a positive annual review, promotion or bonus), and let me tell you: You get absolutely neither of those things as a SAHP.

Over some time, I came to realize that something in me missed those signs of affirmation and acknowledgement. The things I used to brush aside as undeserved became the very things I grew to appreciate in a role where they were no longer offered. I realized that they were tiny and significant pats on my back propelling me forward, and sometimes it was hard not having those around.

Managing

When you have a child, you quickly learn that much of parenting is about managing emotions — your own, that is. Sure, a big part of the job has to do with learning how to effectively manage your child's emotions, and boy is that a big task. But I'd say that as a parent, it's far more difficult and soul-crushing to manage your own feelings.

As a SAHD, this may have been one of the most challenging parts of the job. There were days when I just couldn't break an unfavorable momentum. Potty training (at least our first flawed attempt at it), for instance, was a miserable time for Brianna and me, and to this day I regret certain moments when I poorly managed my emotions.

I always thought I had a bit more patience than others, but my time as a SAHD disabused me of that misconception.

Zero

As a SAHP, it's quite easy to slip into the trap of thinking about how much income you're bringing in for the family, and unless you've got the bandwidth and ability to run a nice side gig, that's probably close to zero. While I'm thankful that I wasn't severely afflicted by this burden, I won't deny that I was keenly aware of it from time to time. Consequently, it never felt right to unnecessarily spend any money on myself, and I felt a pang of shame whenever we talked about budgeting and spending.

I haven't really focused on the gender aspect of my time as a SAHD so far, and that's because it was rarely something I felt was held against me. For that I am thankful. But I'll mention it in this context because I wasn't impervious to societal norms regarding gender roles, and I can't deny that it added a bit of fuel to my burning guilt and low sense of self-worth.

This internal dilemma reached beyond the realms of income and roles to the domain of downtime. If I wasn't bringing in any money, how dare I spend time on myself rather than time ticking things off the to-do list? That was a murmur I constantly struggled to quell, to little success.

Seeing the end

One of the more abstract and profound SAHD struggles I encountered came when the outlines of an end to my term were visible — when I started having a clearer answer to the dreaded question above. As I began looking for jobs, part of me found it exhilarating to see what opportunities were possible and within reach. But a slightly larger part of me was stricken with an acute sadness that my time as a SAHD was nearing a tangible conclusion.

It was sad to finally realize and feel the weight of an end to my special time with Brie as her SAHD. To envision a life where she was not my primary to-do, my sole project, my singular focus was sobering. To let go of that time and entrust much more of her well-being to others was heartbreaking.

I carried deep remorse with me to the end of that gilded chapter with my daughter, and to this day I ponder what else I could have done better for her during that time.

I've since learned that the resumption of my career didn't mean the end of my days as a SAHD, at least functionally. I'm still able to tap into those wells of energy, dedication and purpose in flashes, and I'm thankful for that.

The Upside

I've spent all these words on the difficulties of being a SAHD, and I could have spent many more on this topic because, well, it was very hard. But I can't talk about that side of the coin without at least acknowledging the other.

There was so much I absolutely treasured and enjoyed about being a SAHD, both in the moment and in hindsight. To wake up each morning and know that you're getting a front-row seat to your child's development and growth is nothing short of amazing. I wouldn't trade those days for anything in the world.

Every outing felt like a little father-daughter date. Of course challenges like finding a changing table in a restroom to which I had access, trying to calm a distressed toddler in the backseat while driving and squeezing in a boring errand during a "fun" day out took some of the shimmer away from those excursions. But it was always a joy to see Brie and enjoy her company in so many different environments. Even repetitive routines felt fresh.

I also relished the opportunity to give my wife space to really spread her wings at work, especially during a challenging time like the height of the pandemic. This was an expression of love for my spouse that I never knew was possible, and I savored it to the best of my ability.

The last thing I'll mention here is that I will forever be grateful for the chance to give my daughter a positive male role model so early in her life. I say this with a bit of hesitancy because I know I was far from perfect and that it will take years to really see whether or not I was and am continuing to be an actually positive male figure in her life. But in a world where so many men are falling short of their duty and calling, especially in their relation to girls and women, I hope and pray that I've shown Brie what it looks like when a father tries his best to love his daughter and be a good man.

And I hope that matters.

Dear SAHD/SAHD-to-be...

Don't follow my example: Find a community of SAHPs, if at all possible.
Screw the guilt. Work with your partner to find time for yourself. Be alone. Be with your friends. Be with your hobbies.
Have grace and understanding for those who unknowingly ask or say ignorant and offensive things, and for those who can't quite connect with you anymore. You are, after all, in a unique position. Focus more on how you can share your experience so they understand your struggles and joys better; focus more on being a good friend and spouse.
Have grace and understanding for yourself.
Always remember that what you do is, indeed, a legitimate job, no matter what your lack of salary says. Your job is insanely difficult and you have little to no downtime. Don't let any comment or internal whisper lie to you about this. You deserve and need acknowledgement and balance, too.
Find a path to having an open and honest dialogue with your partner about your struggles and needs. Don't give up if it's awkward or difficult at first.
Get on the same page as your partner regarding expectations for how long your time as a SAHD will last.
If you're not giving your all, you're doing it wrong. Get over your pride, put the damn phone down and lean all the way into this. Remember that your child is always watching and learning from you.
Being a great SAHD doesn't make you less of a man; it makes you an even better one.

Thanks for reading.