Stay-At-Home Dads Embrace Their Wives’ Dreams

Fathers who left their careers discuss how they got over the mental barrier of not being traditional breadwinners

Two weeks before Father’s Day, on the same day, two of my friends quit their jobs to become stay-at-home dads. They had very different circumstances, but they left the corporate world for similar reasons.

Dan worked at the same company for 26 years, his entire career. In his late 40s, he and his wife recently paid off their mortgage and gained financial flexibility. When his job become overly stressful and demanding of his time, he quit and took a part-time maintenance position at our church. But his primary motivation is that he wants to spend more time with his son and daughter as his wife continues to build her career.

On the other hand, Trevor had only been at his company for a few months. In his early 30s, he thought he had finally “made it” with a leadership position at a billion-dollar corporation. But the job was killing him with 70-hour work weeks, and he soon realized that a big salary isn’t always worth the cost. Despite having more than $300,000 in student loan debt from his wife’s dental school bills, Trevor turned in his resignation. He’s now working alongside his spouse, Erica, as she opens a new dental practice.

Even though these two guys are in totally opposite financial situations, they both came to the same conclusion. They decided that the best way to play the role of family “provider” was to leave their high-paying jobs.

That’s a tough mental leap for most men to make. Speaking from the personal experience of a job loss, I understand how closely we often tie our identities to our careers. When I got laid off with a newborn baby at home six years ago, I felt like I had failed my family. As husbands and fathers, many men can’t imagine a scenario where they’re not working. It doesn’t come naturally.

On this Father’s Day, I wanted to better understand how stay-at-home dads get over the psychological barrier of not being traditional breadwinners. In interviews with several friends, I found a common theme in their stories:

To take the bold step of becoming a stay-at-home dad, a husband must believe in his wife. He must embrace her dreams and possibly put his own aspirations on hold. It’s only when a husband sees the full potential of his wife can he feel confident enough to leave behind one of the primary drivers of his identity and purpose: his career.

Stay-At-Home Dad Decision No. 1: Financial

Andrew decided to become a stay-at-home dad because his wife has more corporate ambition and earnings potential.

Four years ago, Andrew became the first stay-at-home dad I know. After a decade as an accountant, he left his job the day his first son was born. He and his wife prepared for years for the big moment.

First, they paid down all their debt after taking Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University course. As a recovering reckless spender who came into the marriage with a lot of credit card debt, Andrew says this was critical. It allowed them to save much more quickly, eventually reaching a bank account balance of about $40,000.

The couple needed that cash fund because they knew they would go two years without any income. Unlike Dan and Trevor, Andrew’s wife wasn’t working when he became a stay-at-home dad. She was earning an MBA at UNC Chapel Hill. She was in school, and he was at home with their baby.

It was all part of the plan.

As an accountant, Andrew made around $50,000 and didn’t expect to ever get raises of more than 2-3 percent. His only track to high income was getting a CPA, but he didn’t want to commit to accounting. He had no ambition there.

“My heart wasn’t in it,” he said. “I didn’t want to be an accountant at age 50. I hated going to the office every day.”

Andrew’s wife was exactly the opposite. She had dreams of becoming a business executive and casting vision in the boardroom, but she was stuck in a non-profit administrative role that paid her less than $30,000. She was full of ambition with no opportunity for advancement.

So, Andrew and his wife made a calculated financial decision. They researched job placement rates and average incomes for MBA students coming out of the UNC program, and they realized she could make more by herself after grad school than they could together in their jobs at the time. It was a smart move just based on dollars and cents.

But Andrew’s choice was about more than money. He considered the transition to stay-at-home dad an investment in his wife and her dreams. It was also a values-based decision, guided by their faith, to have one parent at home during the years of greatest influence in their kids’ lives.

“Women have aspirations just the same as men,” Andrew told me as we caught up last week, four years after they left Chicago. “She’s extraverted and wants to accomplish great things out in the world, and I just don’t think that way at all. I wanted to get behind her dream, and this is how I’m doing it.”

One MBA degree and two kids later, Andrew and his wife left UNC for Atlanta with $700 to their names. She now makes six figures, and he doesn’t regret anything.

Stay-At-Home Dad Decision No. 2: Relational

Trevor watches Erica sign a design and construction contract for their new dental practice. Trevor left his corporate job so his wife could pursue her dream.

Looking back, Andrew talked about how spouses in supportive marriages must make the appropriate sacrifices at the right times. He has his own dreams of going into ministry and preaching, but he says those can come later. Right now, it’s his wife’s time to shine.

I hear the same sentiment from my other stay-at-home dad friends. Trevor doesn’t fit the classical definition of the term because he’s working harder now as Erica’s office manager, marketer and champion than he did at his last job. However, the career shift does allow him to get to his daughter’s gymnastics class and other activities, which wasn’t possible before with the demands of his job and a long commute.

So, I use the label “stay-at-home dad” loosely here just to describe my guy friends who have left corporate life to focus on family. But the point remains the same: To take the leap of faith required to become a stay-at-home dad, you must realize that you’re not the sole owner of ambition.

Just two weeks into his new reality, Trevor admits he struggles mentally with not acting as the family provider in the traditional way. With no regular paycheck, he finds himself fighting off thoughts of failure. Unlike Andrew the accountant, Trevor had high future earnings potential that would make him rich by most standards. His rationale for becoming a stay-at-home dad was more relational than financial.

“Leaving corporate after only 10 years was definitely not easy,” he said. “As men, the place where we feel most able to use our talents, where we most feel like we know what we’re doing, is in our careers. I needed to put that aside. Perhaps said a better way, I needed to use my skill set in a new way to support my wife, who is an extremely talented practitioner as a dentist.

“I joke with Erica that she has twice the amount of education that I do. She’s the smart one in the family who figured out how to earn the same income in half the hours. Now that we’re small business owners, we’ll both be working a lot more — just together, which makes all the difference.”

Trevor is quick to point out that the decision was bigger than Erica’s personal dream. The couple sees their dental practice as a higher calling on their lives, a place where they can build community. They have a vision to care for patients and build relationships in a way that makes people feel known, welcomed and valued – whether they’re wealthy professionals or newly settled refugees.

So, Trevor traded his own career goals for God’s plan for his family.

“We’re not here to pursue our dreams,” he said. “We’re here to pursue our call. And those are actually very different things. Because it’s the call, it becomes your dream, even if it wasn’t something you initially wanted to do.”

Trevor and Erica still haven’t examined the family budget to see where they need to cut back. He admits it might seem backwards to cut off half their household income overnight without thinking through the ramifications. But sometimes faith requires following a call into the unknown.

In his previous job, Trevor earned a healthy income but wasn’t as present as he wanted to be for his wife and daughters. So, while he was providing for his family financially, he says he failed as a provider in the greater sense of the word — “Provider with a capital ‘P.'” Ironically, now that he’s not earning a salary at all, he feels like he’s fulfilling that obligation.

“As our financial adviser said, you don’t make a decision like this because it makes sense financially. On paper, strictly in terms of numbers, it’s the dumbest financial decision of our lives,” he said. “But I felt so strongly the need to partner with Erica and to support her. I want to humble myself, serve her and enable her to pursue those passions and our calling to serve this community. That’s the way provide for my family now.”

Pathway to a passionate and joyful life

Trevor knows he still needs to work out the family budget, especially because the dental practice hasn’t earned a dime yet. But that’s a secondary consideration for now. The immediate priority is pursuing the dream Trevor and his wife have for their family: a shared calling, a stronger marriage and more availability for their two daughters.

“The pathway to a happy life and a life that you feel passionate about, and the pursuit of joy and a calling, is way more valuable than money,” he said. “In fact, money becomes worthless in that context.”

Deep down, I envy my stay-at-home dad friends. Even as I climb the ladder of generosity to avoid becoming a rich fool, I can’t always give to my family as much as I would like.

It’s not that I hate my job. Quite the opposite. As a partner at a fast-growing marketing agency, I’ve helped lead the company from $2 million to $13 million in revenue in six years. I work with incredibly smart and supportive colleagues, feel appreciated and valued, and enjoy a relatively healthy work-life balance. I couldn’t ask for a better place to spend my working days.

But I’m inspired by these stories of stay-at-home dads who sacrificed their careers to empower their wives. On this Father’s Day, it’s a reminder that being a good dad sometimes means providing for our families in ways that go well beyond money.