I’ve heard that some stay-at-home parents get business cards. Here’s what I’m thinking of for mine:
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Have you been following all the opt-out stuff? Here’s the current score:
- Lisa Belkin wrote in the New York Times years ago that women don’t fulfill their professional potentials because they choose to spend more of their energy on the family unit.
- Then there was a response in the Columbia Journalism Review last month that called opting-out a bunch of baloney: women can’t get ahead because the structure doesn’t allow for it.
- Now the debate is all over the blogosphere.
The common sense consensus seems to be that no, mothers don’t (as a rule) opt out from career success; they’re simply given fewer opportunities in most professional settings. That’s probably true, and I would be the last to dispute it.
Maybe I’m an outré weirdo (like usual), but I am happy as pie to have opted out of my “career.” I put career in quotation marks because I never really had one specific one. I’ve had lots of jobs (see the sidebar) and I consider that all of them helped to get me where I am today.
| radio traffic manager • Russian interpreter • theatrical lighting designer • database programmer • whale watch guide • marine mammal rehab supervisor • camp counselor • youth mentor • naturalist • stay-at-home parent |
So why am I an opt-out-of-a-career daddy? A number of possibilities:
- I am just not very good at having bosses. In all those jobs I pretty much always worked in small(ish), nonprofit, grass-roots organizations, and I still had trouble with the organizational politics.
- As a member of Generation Whichever (my parents were born pre-WWII, so I’m not in the Baby Boom Bounce, and I’m too old to be in Gen-X), I’ve never expected that I would stick to one job, one workplace, one career.
- Being a stay-at-home dad is my career.
Have you ever seen the Irish proverb “May you have an interesting life!” The joke is that it’s presented as an “insult” — because an interesting life is one full of challenge, get it?
I’ve always gravitated toward that “interesting life” idea, though, or, even better, a “creative life.” Sure, I won’t ever be CEO of anything, but I can honestly say that not a month has gone by in my adult life when I haven’t learned something.
Of course, some of the things I’ve learned have had to do with removing poop stains from various fabrics, but that’s creative, too.
Right?
