In 2018, The Atlantic published a rather interesting essay extolling the virtues of men who decided to sacrifice their careers to raise their children. In doing so, their wives became the primary breadwinners.
Now, before I am accused of being a cretinous, knuckle-dragging ignoramus (it wouldn’t be the first time), let me state the following: this is not an attack on men who opt to become stay-at-home dads. This is a free world, and people can do as they wish (within reason, of course).
This piece outlines the unspoken dangers associated with becoming a stay-at-home dad. In this age of woke narratives and emotionally-charged essays, it’s difficult to find any articles discussing the negatives of becoming a stay-at-home dad.
The rise of the stay-at-home dad is a very recent phenomenon. It’s closely tied to the idea of “bucking” social norms and reversing traditional gender roles. The two most important words in that previous sentence are “norms” and “traditional.” Of course, norms and traditions are not always perfect. However, they are significant when it comes to gender roles and romantic relationships.
Men and women are very different beings, replete with a whole host of very different strengths and weaknesses. We were designed to complement each other, not replace each other.
This is not to say that dads shouldn’t play a significant role in a child’s life or that all mothers should stay at home. Not at all. This is to say that, traditionally speaking, men have been the primary breadwinners, and men have always worked outside of the home.
By reversing thousands of years of tradition, we should expect to see some rather profoundly negative impacts. We are, after all, the products of tradition.
It’s (No Longer) A Man’s World
It’s a man’s world, or so we have been told. However, when James Brown crooned those lyrics, he referred to red-blooded, American men. Remember them?He was referring to the type of men who actually made things for a living—cars, buildings, and of course, money. But those days are coming to an end. Today, to secure a high-paying job, one requires a respectable degree (not always, but usually). In the United States, 60 percent of college degrees are now earned by women.
I reached out to Richard Cooper, an entrepreneur and author of “The Unplugged Alpha,” for comment on the matter. “Truthfully,” he said, “women really struggle admiring a man she can’t look up to.”
Cooper continued, “No man playing ‘Mr. Mom’ is ever pined for by women.” Instead, women “pine for the shirtless, buff, firefighters in calendars, not ‘Mr. Mom.’”
Cooper, a man who has written and spoken about the topic of marriage in great detail, argues that it’s odd to come across a woman who gets “excited about dealing with a man, over the long term, that makes less money than she does,” mainly because women “want to look up to a giant, not down to a beta.”
Cooper accurately added, “One of the precursors to divorce is when a married couple has been living as ‘equals’ both working in their own respective careers, and she gets a big pay rise and promotion, but he keeps skipping along the bottom.”
This is why Cooper tells his male clients “to chase excellence, not women.”
What’s Cooper’s advice to married men?
In short, men “can’t relax in a marriage.” They must always “chase excellence and make something of themselves in life.” Become a master of something, be it writing, wrestling, and/or making money. With stay-at-home dads, Cooper, a father himself, believes that “nobody looks upon these men as heroes.” They are, in fact, “accessories.”
He finished by stating the following: “There’s a reason why when history celebrates great men, there are no ’stay at home' dads mentioned. They are all forgotten.”
