Rethinking the Concept of ‘Stay-at-Home Father': A Progressive or Conservative Concept?

The term “stay-at-home dad’ (SAHD) has become a taken-for-granted one in academic and popular discourses. Increasing numbers of cross-disciplinary research projects and journal articles use the term to categorize fathers and families; scholars and journalists often employ it as a short hand description for fathers who leave full-time leave paid work for intermittent or extended periods of time; government statistics cite growing numbers of stay-at-home dads in many countries - especially in North America and Europe. Yet the concept ‘stay-at-home dad’ is a particular historical and social construction. Its meanings and the everyday practices of work and care of men who use, or are given, this label are incredibly diverse; moreover, there are contradictory gendered implications that emerge from this cocncept and this rising set of practices. 

Informed by a twenty-year research program on breadwinning mothers and ‘stay-at-home’ or secondary earning fathers, this paper traces the historical and social evolution of the term ‘stay-at- home dad‟. It makes three arguments and poses two questions: First, I argue that 'stay-at-home father’ is an ambiguous concept, which simultaneously essentializes and creates a binary between breadwinning and caregiving. Second, while it seems to indicate a radical gendered change, the concept, and its associated practices, inadvertently support the privatization of care work while possibly shifting attention away from more collective and radical solutions for caregiving. Finally, I argue that the term should be re-thought in the light of shifting dynamics between gender, work, care, and consumption. The paper poses two questions: Is the SAHD a progessive or conservative concept? And what are the practical and theoretical implications of discarding or changing this concept?