Stay-at-home dads gather at Paul Sizemore’s house: From left, Steve Webb, Sizemore, Stuart Ungar and Chris Tichenor share coffee and scones. (photo by brian bohannon) |
In a cozy Germantown kitchen, a small group of parents gathers around a bright red espresso machine. A platter of warm scones sits on the dining room table. Small children wander, or gallop, crayons or toys in hand, darting under legs and around bodies.
Eli, 4, is a natural climber. He’s searching for drinking straws that he assures the group his mother has stashed in a high cabinet. A set of arms reach out for his safe descent.
Eden is only weeks from her third birthday. The tiny ballerina looks for all the world as if she might trip over her new pink boa. A parent bags it into a satchel for safe-keeping.
At 22 months, Aaron is hungry to learn about construction. He chews on a Bob the Builder Pez dispenser. Nope, no candy inside.
Coffee flows with conversation in one room. Lego blocks and juice flow all around the house. There is talk of scheduling, toys, telecommuting and laundry. Such is the buzz within this weekly meeting of stay-at-home parents. But these parents are all men — they’re members of L.A.D.s, short for Louisville At-home Dads.
And these guys know their way around stoves, local museums, city parks, diapers and child-friendly DVDs. They are prime manifestations of an evolving family living arrangement, with mom in the workplace and dad at home as the primary caregiver.
Today’s mid-morning guests are Greg McClellan with 19-month-old Drew; Chris Tichenor with Miles, 3; and Steve Webb with 22-month-old Aaron. They were brought together by Stuart Ungar, the founder of L.A.D.s and also better known in the under-four-foot-tall world as the daddy of Eden and the other Aaron.
The host for this playdate is Paul Sizemore, in his sixth week as a L.A.D.s member and father of Eli, and Chris, age 8, who attends the Brown School. Paul’s wife, Lisa, manages the children’s department at the Louisville Free Public Library’s main branch. Paul, a Web developer, is now project manager of the family household. He’s also pursuing a career in commercial gourmet baking.
Leading his observant towheaded son through the welcoming rooms of the Sizemore house, Webb clearly enjoys the intelligent, warm company of the fathers and their children. The casual and interactive “playdates” rotate from home to home on a weekly basis.
Eden Ungar just finished her chocolate chip scone. (photo by brian bohannon) |
These days, many a dad proverbially wears his baby in a cloth sling while working on a computer. Some of this stems from the expense of quality childcare; several fathers who’ve left the workforce to remain at home note that a great deal of their paychecks had been going to childcare anyway. Also, social perceptions are changing, acknowledging fathers who reward their offspring with consistent presence and participation while leaving the winning of bread to mom and the baking of bread to dad.
A report released last month by the U.S. Census Bureau indicates that the number of stay-at-home fathers rose 53 percent from 1995 to 2003, from 64,000 to 98,000 fathers who had left the labor force to care for children. (Meanwhile, the number of stay-at-home mothers rose 21 percent during the same period, from 4.4 million to 5.4 million.) And the number of children these dads care for has risen 40 percent, from 125,000 to 175,000. Some career and family experts speculate there has been a further increase in stay-at-home dads because of layoffs during the economic downturn.
There are several breeds of stay-at-home dad. Some have established a revolving door or tag-team arrangement with their wives: Dad runs the household and deals with the children’s needs and recreation by day, then mom takes over at night when dad goes to work, or vice versa. Other parents with flexible careers alternate, arranging for one parent to be in charge of childcare for the first year, then handing over the responsibility to the other for the next, and so on.
Greg McClellan and his son Drew, 19 months, join Stuart Ungar and Eden, 2, during open playtime at the Sizemore house. (photo by brian bohannon) |
Applauding a few dance moves as well as setting up some cups of warm cocoa, L.A.D.s organizer Ungar balances the buzz in the room by praising his daughter and talking shop with some of the guys about printing family photos on the computer.
Such scenes are nothing new to Ungar, who has been the primary caregiver through two family relocations prompted by his wife’s journalism career. His newfound role began with the birth of their first child; nearly six years ago, he organized the Delaware At-home Dad Association (D.A.D.A.). When his wife, Laura Ungar, was hired as the medical reporter at The Courier-Journal, the family moved to Louisville, where he hoped to continue the satisfaction and success of what he’d started in Delaware. Both Ungars now share laughs about Stuart’s life before and after the children — how he used to be in marketing and now he does the marketing.
Ungar made his mark in the creative marketing world of the arts and other business ventures. Among other fundraising and corporate efforts, he ran a children’s magazine, WordDance, before reaching the /files/storyimages/of his attention span. That’s when Aaron, and then Eden, became the subjects or his most creative focus. It was a slight transition, but Ungar acknowledges that children will reinvent you. And perhaps prompt you to start a group.
“It was great to get together with dads, just to talk about anything at all,” Ungar says of his first group, D.A.D.A. “One conversation might go, ‘Oh, my kid is doing the weirdest thing,’ then another guy would say, ‘Oh, my kid did that last month.’ So, you don’t feel like your child is from outer space or that you’re not handling things very well.”
Since starting organizations and events is second nature to Ungar, he enjoyed the task of appealing to at-home dads in the Louisville area. When he left the group in Delaware, there were more than two dozen dads on the e-mail list. When the family settled in Louisville, he hit the Internet and researched the community to find like-minded parents to start another group, which was not difficult. In early October, Ungar had the first organizational meetings of L.A.D.s. He and writer Webb found each other after Webb’s wife typed “Louisville at-home dads” into a search engine. Ungar grins when he refers to it as the day the new group doubled in size.
Webb was elated. “I mentioned that I didn’t think I was a traditional stay-at-home dad,” he says, “but he said his experience was that there is no such thing.”
Multi-tasking and macaroni
The kitchen banter draws some groans and laughter as the subject changes to the unfortunate country ballad “Mr. Mom” by the band Lonestar. A snippet of a verse makes it clear why the song generates some discontent in this group of dedicated dads.
Pampers melt in a Maytag dryer
Crayons go up one drawer higher
Rewind Barney for the fifteenth time
Breakfast, six. Naps at nine
“Man, that song just hit me hard,” exhales one father as he empties the last of the coffee into his mug. Nothing could be farther from the truth; stay-at-home dads seem like a misunderstood species.
But there is no misunderstanding among the children about what they like about staying home with their fathers.
“Why do you like hanging out with Daddy?” I ask Ungar’s daughter as the little lady clutches a pastry in one hand while leotard legs swing from the edge of her chair.
“He’s fun, he’s smart and we eat macaroni and cheese.”
Duly noted. I help Eden remove a chocolate chip from a scone.
Sweet as he is shy, Drew prefers the view from his father’s arms until he’s bold enough to bl/files/storyimages/in. Miles glances at the television set, which remains off during this particular playdate. He finds his imagination and takes it upstairs to join the other kids as they try on hats from what seems like quite a collection, with berets, hardhats, togies, space helmets, cowboy hats and more.
Ungar points out that while flexibility and change are doable, more often than not the deciding factor in who works where, and for whom, is that all-important benefits package. But beyond finances, the goal for this father and husband is focused on his wife and children and is rather straightforward:
“To be supportive.”
For more information on L.A.D.s, contact Stuart Ungar at 502-426-5376 or LouisvilleLADS-owner@yahoogroups.com [3].