According to the U.S Census, only six men in the whole of America defined themselves as stay-at-home dads back in 1970. By 2014, that number had grown to 2 million. That’s evidence of a radical social change that you’d expect to only have snowballed in the intervening years. But despite more men becoming stay-at-home dads, it’s not always an easy transition.
Rory Brown is a director at the NSW Department of Planning, but three years ago, he put his high-flying career on hold in order to look after the kids. In the new episode of The Father Hood’s podcast in partnership with Parents at Work, Rory speaks about this time being a stay-at-home dad for his two young children.
On the whole, it was an extremely rewarding experience on multiple fronts. But Rory also speaks candidly about how self-doubt began to creep in when he considered venturing back into the workforce. As he admits in this extract from the interview.
“About 18 months in I realised that there was an opportunity for me to do a little bit of consultancy work, and even just thinking about that suddenly got quite scary. I thought: ‘I’ve been out of workforce for this long time. Do I still have the skills to do it?’
“You definitely begin to doubt yourself. And that’s something that I want people who are thinking about being a stay-at-home dad just to be aware of. Those doubts can happen quite quickly, but they’re also natural and you can actually move through them quickly too.
“The way that I did that was one evening I really looked at my CV and I reminded myself of all the things that I’d done from a corporate perspective. It’s almost like I needed to do that to give myself a bit of a confidence injection.
“I think It’s good to be aware that those doubts can happen. But you don’t suddenly forget all your work experience just because you’ve been doing something else for a bit.”
To listen to Rory’s complete interview, listen to the full podcast: here.