Stay At Home Dads? Who Knew?!

For most of my life my mom has always been the stay at home parent while my dad has always been the one with a full time job. When I was born my mom worked for a couple years but she soon quit to care for her kids while my dad went to work. My mom's choice was not uncommon but this article from NY times really shocked me because it proclaimed that in 1989 there was 1.1 million stay at home dads but in 2012 there was a report of 2 million. People may argue this increase was because of the recession and the unemployment rates but evidence shows that up to 1/5% of fathers choose to stay home to care for their family while in 1989 it was only 5%.

This statistic was really surprising because not only that but women are now 47% of the workforce and increasingly earning more money than their husbands. This surprises me because America has always portrayed a classic American family with a father who goes to the office everyday and a mother who stays home to clean and take care of the kids. This image of a classic American family is portrayed in books, movies, t.v. shows, magazines, etc. Growing up I had the idea stuck in my head that I would always be a stay at home mom. Clearly the statistics are changing but are people's views of what an American family should be like changing? I would argue no. 

In  a Pew survey done last year, just over 50% of people said children are better off with having a mother at home while 8% said the same thing about fathers. This does not surprise me because although statistics are changing, you rarely see a stay at home dad as the star of a movie. People can be uncomfortable or scared of change. For hundreds of years mothers have been raising children which is why I think it will take a while before there is next big movie or t.v. show starring a stay at home father and a mother as the breadwinner.