Hey dads,

I'm 35, from Shanghai, China, and I've got a 2-year-old who's pretty much running my life right now lol.

I used to work in tech, but I've been home taking care of my kid for a while now. It's been quite a change, and honestly, some days are harder than my old job.

I've been wanting to meet other dads, especially those staying home with their kids. Just curious how things are going for everyone, what your days look like, and how you manage to find time for yourself.

Does anyone know of any active Discord groups for dads? Would be cool to hang out, chat about parenting, or just talk about random stuff when we get some free time.

English isn't my first language, so bear with me if I sound a little awkward sometimes.

Anyway, glad I found this sub!

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

Hi everyone! Another SAHD here been trying to make dad friends but it’s hard cause we’re all spread out. I thought maybe making a localized(ish) group might help?

After 35 years in oil and gas I am about to become a stay at home dad to my 13 year old. I am going to support my wife as she takes an executive position at a global company. What advice can someone offer as we take this leap into the unknown. We are financially stable so i don't beleive that should be an issue.

My daughter, 13 years old has a voracious appetite. Previously, she ate small portions and disliked pumpkin pies, steamed sweet potatoes, collards and beetroot-cane juice.

Now, she eats everything on the menu, in the fridge and recently I found snacks stashed in her school bag. Is this eating attributed to growing up since she is a teenager?

She has grown bigger, rounded, hope it is the right word. I don't worry now. I hope overeating doesn't cause health issues.

How do you handle your teenager? Please share your tips, story. There are parents who face this worry everyday.

I'm a mom who travels most of the month for work (restaurant operations), so I'm the one leaving. I know it's not a dad-to-dad question, so I hope this is okay.

At work, every shift change has a handoff log so nothing gets dropped. At home, my handoffs are mostly texts from airports. I want to do this better, and you all are the ones on the receiving end.

For those of you holding things down while your partner travels: what makes a handoff actually work for you, and what drives you crazy?

First and foremost let me say I am so grateful the time I get with my 2-year-old daughter. However to say this past year hasn’t been extremely difficult would be a lie.

I was previously a top performer in my role at work and was surrounded by other go getters. I had things to be proud of.

A year now of staying home and wife working full time I feel like I’m disposable. My life has become quiet, slow and dormant.

My wife’s over the last year has exploded with adventure. She’s picked up body building and got into the pro scene. She has friends and is grinding everyday to make that life for herself.

I do my best to give her all she needs to get to where she wants to go but in the process I’m losing myself. I feel I’ve given all that I can with nothing else to give.

This time has been incredibly hard on me mentally. I’m a very social person and that is almost non existent and seeing my wife have it all is hard.

I’m not trying to complain. All I will say is I have a very different opinion on the SAHD thing. I have so many people tell me how lucky I am and how nice it must be.

It’s hard. It’s challenging in a completely different way I think most don’t understand without experiencing it.

I’m lost. I’m lonely. I’m tired.

SAHD with 10, 7, 3 yo kids and a wife. Kids can be picky eaters and other times eat a lot. My wife likes the look of a full fridge and sometimes buys a bit too much.

I myself am frugal and hate to waste food. As a result my lunch at home isn’t just leftovers, it’s like 4-5 food bits of leftovers in a really weird combinations. Best example was yesterday:

1/3 hotdog from Costco my kid didn’t want from Wednesday
A 1/2 bag of instant rice, with the juice of a Costco rotisserie chicken mixed in
A small smoothie consisting of a banana, and two bowls of leftover cereal (life and oatmeal) with milk in them
A small bit of leftover refried beans, Mexican carry out from the weekend
Half a toasted everything bagel with bits of scrambled eggs on top, my wife didn’t eat it
A mandarin orange

I never eat food gone bad and try to eat a reasonable and healthy spread of food. The food can be a bit random but I take pleasure in eating food that would otherwise be thrown out and lead to wasting both resources and money.

Just wondering if other Dads here do this too.

Mom's not home after work again. So idk, being a parent alone isn't easy.

I am convinced that our role reversal has us completely screwed up. I’m not saying only a mom can be the stay-at-home parent, but clearly, stay-at-home dads are in the vast minority. I am one of them. I feel that my role reversal is killing me.

I don’t know if anybody else can weigh in on this, but when you have a working parent and a stay-at-home parent, and the working parent is the father and the stay-at-home parent is the mother, I feel like there are clearer lines.

The dad goes to work. The mom runs the household and parents. I have a working wife who makes all the money. I’m the stay-at-home parent. I’m a stay-at-home dad. I run the household. I parent the kids when my wife’s working. She obviously parents them when she’s not working, but I’m the default parent. I’m the food parent. I’m the sole driver.

So I end up doing everything: all the errand running, all the grocery shopping, all the food prep, all household maintenance, chores, cleaning, trash, everything.

Now, what I don’t understand with my role reversal is that my wife also wants to have a say in what I do. She doesn’t just get up and leave and go to work in the morning. COVID changed a lot of this with working from home. She sometimes works from home, but also works from the office now.

However, my wife always wants to have a say in what I’m doing and how I’m doing it. I feel like if the roles were reversed, the dad would leave, go to work, and he’d have nothing to do with what’s going on in the house. He wouldn’t be texting his wife 25 times a day with to-dos: Can you do this? Can you do that? Questions, updates, etc.

It would be a way more clear-cut line if our roles weren’t reversed. And this is what’s killing me.
My wife should be sleeping. She has work in the morning. She has an intense job. Instead, she comes upstairs to the kids’ room, where I’ve just read one of the kids to bed because she was finishing up work after reading one of the other kids to bed.

And she’s going on and on and on about how the kids’ room is a mess, and this needs to be cleaned up, and I need to do it, and I need to get the kids to do it, and this needs to be done tomorrow, and it shouldn’t be like this.

And I just feel that, yes, of course she can have a say in stuff. It’s her home as well. But I feel that with a stay-at-home parent, it’s like the stay-at-home parent takes care of all of that. The working parent, if it was the dad, would not be, at midnight, having a conference with the wife saying, “You need to clean up this room.” I just feel like that doesn’t happen. A working dad would never say this or even devote his energy to it.

Can any other SAHDs weigh in on this in any way?

I need to think of what to do. Maybe to communicate better with her , 7 months

Fellow SAHDs, wish me luck! I completed my AS in Engineering this past summer and got a good job in field service last month. I was the SAHD while I was taking classes (and working PT as a math tutor), but that time's over now. Our youngest is getting into preschool, and I got offered good money for this new position. It requires travel, but it's a 2 week on/2 week off schedule so it's not too bad.

The last few years have been tough. Lots of penny pinching and stressing about money, but it's all been worth it. I got to spend lots of time with the boys while studying in order to advance my career. And I was rewarded at the end of it with a job good enough to be the primary breadwinner if my wife wants to take a break (she's still deciding on that one).

I just wanted to share the good news with y'all. Not a whole lot of people understand how hard it is for us to get back into the workforce successfully, but I know y'all can appreciate it.

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

So my wife and I are considering having me be a stay at home dad. She's definitely the breadwinner. I make $56,000 as a banker and she makes $550,000 as an executive at a pharmaceutical company. I also have 2 other sources of income - I have a rental property I own outright free and clear that I had before the wedding. I get $1395/mo in rent. I also get an inherited pension from my deceased mother that's $747/mo. So I have about $2000/mo in residual income.

What I am struggling with is just the idea that culturally, as a white upper middle class couple in suburbia South Florida, I should be working as the man of the house. How do you reconcile your pride with a duty to family?

Also, I am struggling with the idea of losing out on a 401k and company match. How do you reconcile with that?

Our marriage is a good one. There has never been mine or her income. It goes into a joint account. Everything we have is ours, not his or hers. Bills all come out of the same account in auto pay.

I think I am just struggling and feeling like a shitty man that I am the one staying home and not my wife.

Any advice fellas?

Hey fellow SAHDs! I’m 8 months into being home with my LO. We found out pretty quickly that a daily outing/activity is really great for both of us. I’ve compiled a bunch of local activities for us but right now it’s just a jumbled mess in my notes app. I want to organize it into some sort of spreadsheet/calendar format so that I can 1) be more organized myself and 2) share with other parents in my area (if you’re in Portland, ME area, happy to share with you too once I finish it!)

Problem is I’m getting stuck on how to structure or format it. Has anyone done something like this before? And ideas on how to start or do you maybe have a template you’d be willing to share? TIYA!

Edit: thanks for all the responses! We’ll be going with a Google cal to start. Appreciate all the help!

My question is about like at school drop-off/pick-up but isn’t limited? My four year old twins are both in preschool this year. Last year, just one went as he’s behind in several areas and needs extra help. There was a Mom, who had a daughter the same age as my other twin, who wasn’t attending preschool. We didn’t really know each other personally, but was a familiar face because we all had gone to Story Time at the library together.

How parking at the school works, you can’t park in the school lot, but there’s a lot about…seems like a mile, but probably a couple hundred yards away. We would park there, and our children became friends, so we would walk together at pickup and drop off every day. Through the course of the year the Mom and I talked some too. Nothing weird or anything.
We even had a few play dates during the summer and with our spouses, attended birthday parties for our children. Ended up being the day after one another.

This year has been different though. She has made it into a group with three or four other Mom’s, who pay me no attention. She walks with them instead. Maybe it’s just my perception, but I feel like the other mom’s, especially like the leader of the group, look down on me. They were all there last year too, but didn’t really associate with us.

There’s been a couple times when the Mom has had me walk with them, but I didn’t feel included with the others. I feel like it’s the stereotypical Moms group…no guys allowed.

All that to ask, in similar situations, what’s your experience with Mom’s? Make any friends? Feel welcome or ignored?