This spring, we had to sell our home and move states. This was a choice to move closer to family. We decided to rent so we could have time to find the right (forever) home.

We had to sign a year-long lease, and ended up in a townhome complex within a neighborhood.

Initially, we were thrilled to discover the townhome complex had tons of kids our kids' ages (8 & 3). We had wonderful friends and kids in our old neighborhood, and I LOVED having the neighbor kids over. It was a joy to see my kids having fun, doting on the neighbor kids, and being the neighborhood parent that passed out freezies on the hot days and cookies on the cold days.
I rarely ever had to get after the neighbor kids. I'd more than likely be teaching my son (8) how to be a kind and respectful friend when having a friend over (sharing things, compromising on what to play/do, not being selfish).

Well... this neighborhood is different.

These kids are mostly ranging from 4-9. I started to realize something was off when these kids would come over in packs and wreak havoc on my house.
I'm not talking the usual mess... I mean crap getting thrown down the stairs, screaming and fighting, my daughter (3) getting ganged up on by the other 4 year old girls literally getting beat by them, and more.

I decided after a couple weeks that I couldn't handle that chaos, so I started limiting 1-2 friends at a time in the little townhome. That made me the "mean" parent.

When this behavior continued, I tried to be nice at first, asking them to treat our home nicely. Then I had to get firm when it escalated (dumping cat food all over every bedroom, chasing/hurting our cat, stealing our toys from our garage, physically bullying my kids).
And often, these kids would look me dead in the eye and tell me "no" when I'd ask them to go outside because things were too rowdy in the house.

I realize that these kids are "free range", but also have absolutely no discipline at home. I caught a 6 year old calling my son a "bitch" repeatedly because he (the 6yo) was chasing him around on his bike trying to hit him, and my son ran home for safety. A 6 year old! This kid JUST went off to kindergarten!!

They'll open our doors if unlocked and walk right in. They'll hang out in our yard if we're eating dinner, staring in our windows. They'll throw rocks at the house.

My kids are getting bitter about it. I'm getting frustrated.

Finally, last night my son wanted to go play with them at their house because they were having a "pool party" (blow up pool). All the neighborhood parents were there drinking. The kids told my son he couldn't play with them.. whatever. We went somewhere else instead. But when we came home later that evening, the boys (6-8 yrs) started ding-dong ditching us.

It's laughable the first time. Annoying the second. But when I was trying to get my 3yo in bed at 9pm, these kids are shouting and swearing at our home from the curb in our yard, watching the windows to see if we're looking so they can ring our doorbell again, and pulling down their pants at our house.

I'm just straight pissed at this point. Their homes are 4 blocks down, so they're not like right next to us. These kids are out here in front of our house taunting us because they don't like us.

So finally when I see a kid start to run up again, I whip open the door and let it out. I'm screaming at them and told them to fuck off, along with a few other regretful things.

They took off and left us alone, but I'm concerned what the parents might do. Do they give a shit enough to come after me for being "mean"? These kids obviously don't care... my last ditch effort was to be a complete mean asshole and see if I could scare them off, because they don't respect parents.

I regret being mean. But what do I do?

I was just told today by my wife that I shouldn't be doing bulk cooking for the week during the weekend. She told me this because, in her mind, spending an hour and a half on a Saturday or Sunday "solo-parenting" our two kids (5 years and 9 months) while I cook is not how she wants to spend her weekends off.

I'm just not understanding the problem here. If I cook during the week, then there is no one to watch the kids while I do it. And I have tried to do it during the week. But then if the baby starts bawling in the high chair while I have my hands full, I get a text from the basement (wife's home office) asking why the baby is crying.

This may be a small issue, but it's the second time it's been brought up in the last month. Like I said, I don't understand the problem. The cooking gets done on the weekend, and there's always enough food for the entire week.

EDIT - I forgot to mention that my wife said "cooking and cleaning is your responsibility". Ok, understood, but why am I being told when to cook? That doesn't make sense.

So, I’ll start this by saying that I’ve really enjoyed being a stay at home dad. I value and love the time with my daughter that I didn’t have when I was the working parent, and have overall found this whole thing to be surprisingly easy. No offense to the stay at home parents they find it difficult, but I don’t.

That said, I’m a little shocked at the hypocrisy that’s going on. When I was working and my wife stayed at home, I was working a salaried job at least 50 hours a week, and that’s a loose AT LEAST. And also had an hour and a half commute. So add three hours of driving to my day. That said, I was still expected to handle a handful of household chores, and IMMEDIATELY relieve my wife of childcare duty as soon as I walked in the door. Chores included garbage, feeding the animals, cats litter box, and bathroom deep clean. Nothing major. I did it with zero complaint.

Now though, my wife is the working parent. She works 40 hours a week if she’s LUCKY. And her commute is about 10 minutes.

As it is, she expects at least two hours to decompress before she takes over childcare, and will NOT touch the house at all. That’s my job. If I even ask her for help, I’m immediately attacked and told that all I do is sit at home all day and do nothing. Which I never did to her.

What on earth do I do here? Because if I point this stuff out, she’ll just call me a lazy piece of shit. Her biggest point is that I had a white collar job and her job is a little bit more physical. Idk how to handle this.

My husband became a stay at home dad four years ago. We currently have a 5 year old and 2 year old, and a baby on the way. It made sense for our family because my salary is 3x what my husband was making, and because he worked in child development prior. At first it felt like the greatest gift, a great move for our family to save on childcare and transition him from what he referred to as "raising other people's kids in a classroom to doing that for our kids". His work schedule was grueling, leaving before our son was awake and getting home after he was asleep.

Fast forward 4 years, and we're in what I feel like is borderline disaster mode. Our home is trashed all the time (partially because we're in the process of majorly decluttering), the kids literally never go anywhere unless I take off work to take them to playdates and outings. I do the school drop off on the way to work (I work remote but regularly work outside of our home at a local coffee shop), cook dinner every night...he never has energy to do anything with the kids, or if he does it's one of the following excuses/reasons: it's too hot outside, he's exhausted, he needs a break from the kids and I'm not pulling my weight, etc.

I do feel for him because he has ADHD (medicated) and minor depression, but this feels like it's just going really badly now. He refuses to see it, won't acknowledge there's a problem, we bicker constantly about his role. If I mention anything about taking the kids out of the house it's seen as me telling him he's doing it all wrong. I've recently started working inside the house and from what I can tell it's a lot of tumultuous burnout cycling. Either everyone is watching TV while he's freaking out at the kids and losing his temper, or zoning out on a screen, sleeping in every morning, or in hyper focus mode either deep cleaning or working on a house project and doing okay.

I feel for him because over the past four years we've moved house and are currently preparing for a new baby, so there's a lot of responsibility on his shoulders to renovate a nursery and he's done literally all of the heavy lifting on moving. I really want to support him and help him out of this burnout, but he just seems to be in complete denial that there's a problem. He won't wake up and just hear what I have to say and see that there's a better way. There's always an excuse as to why we're in this cycle, and that if XYZ just happens then he will be taking the kids out everywhere all the time. But there's just always some blocker in the way that pops up out of nowhere. It also doesn't help that we live in a conservative red state, where he is regularly diminished for being a SAHD, like he's some sort of weirdo for wanting to stay home with our kids or unemployable. He's an incredible dad to our kids and has a true gift for raising children, and I recognize that it is so isolating to have to constantly fight for validity in a role that you're truly good at simply because of gender and social norms.

I miss my creative, fun husband who had such a zest for child raising and wanted to be in our kids lives. He's turned into a grumpy, miserable person who seemingly doesn't want to do anything with our family. He contstantly loses his temper on me and blames mostly everything on me, tells me I'm undermining him, interrupts my work day most days asking when I'm going to be done or telling me that I need to lift on the childcare when I'm in the middle of work. I regularly only get a 4 hour workday in before I'm guilted into taking over. I just don't know what to do anymore...

Would love some advice on how to support him and see if this is realistically salvageable. We've tried couples counseling and it really just doesn't go anywhere. He has such a good mask for coping that it all just feels performative and then I look like the bad guy.

It’s National Be Late for Something Day, which feels like a holiday made specifically for primary caregivers. 

Between a kid refusing to put on socks that "feel wrong," searching 20 minutes for a toy that was in their hand the whole time, or an emergency blowout right as your hand touches the doorknob—we’ve all been there.

Take a breath and cut yourself some slack today. The world will survive without us for five minutes.

What is the most ridiculous, laugh-or-you’ll-cry reason you and the kids were late recently?

Mom here. My partner and I are considering making him a SAHD. Currently, we both work full time but we are potentially losing my sister as our babysitter, and rather than pay an arm and a leg for child care we're considering him becoming a SAHD. We have one in TK and a 6 month old.

What are the discussions/conversations we should be having before making the decision? Any input is helpful.

What’s your household’s #1 non-negotiable safety rule?

Hey Dad's,

I'll try to keep this concise. I have been a SAHD for a little over 2 years. My hand was a bit tied as I can no longer work due to having a brain tumor (successfully removed), developing epilepsy and basically not having the mental energy or focus.

I spent 4 years of schooling, 20 years of working as a biologist. Besides the extreme stress and lack of grants, I felt purpose. I felt like I was doing something to better the world. Ik and also have a purpose raising two kids and am lucky I get to be there for almost every moment to watch them grow into good humans.

I honestly dreamed of being a SAHM dad! No joke at all. We are financially the exact same financially as daycare was insanely priced.

I think this is hard because I was forced into it rather than it being a choice. How or do any of you grapple with finding purpose outside your kids? Where any of you forced into it? Did you have to grieve your oldself? I am really struggling. I have been seeing a therapist and am also on medications.

Thanks for any advice or commiseration.

I have a 2.5yr old and a 2 month old. Im having difficulty managing my time between the two of them. We hardly go out anymore because of the hassle and my toddler is having a hard time with it.

We are still feeding about 3 times per night, so we arent sleeping as much as id like- which leaves me lacking the energy I feel I need to be the highly active dad ive been up to this point.

Advice? Consolation? Thanks.

Hey fellow SAHDs, I'm getting surgery in October and my spouse is taking a month off work to care for our almost 2 year old and me. I will not be able to lift anything over 10lbs or do repetitive movements for the first month and I'm trying to chart out what I do each day to make life easier for my ADHD spouse since I'll be on some hardcore pain meds for the first week or so.

1. I'm having a hard time with figuring out what we can let slide for a month/what doesn't really matter when it comes to household chores. Any advice?

2. I would love any meal prep suggestions that are easy to freeze. I haven't done multi-week meal preps before and feel a little lost.

3. Any cool ideas for things for my spouse and toddler to do together outside of the usual park/library/errands/splash pad that we usually frequent?

4. I would love any other advice/things I'm overlooking from anyone who has been in a similar situation.

I'm really excited for them to have this time together and grateful we live somewhere with leave options so I don't have to stress about finding a month of childcare.

Wife is a nurse, currently working day shift. Not a set in stone schedule, more build as you go. She's being offered a full time position but it's nights. 6 on 8 off. Oldest is in school, youngest probably wouldn't be able to handle mom being home and asleep during the day and would likely need to go to daycare. She's loud and rowdy and would definitely want all moms attention instead of letting her sleep. That would mean ya boy would have to work again, which I'm okay with. Has any other had to work with a similar schedule and how did it pan out?

I've been a stay at home dad for 4 months now, I moved to the US for my wife in July 2025 and had been taking care of my wife while she was pregnant. Lately I've felt extremely depressed, irritated and miserable.

I cook, clean, take care of all issues that pop up with the house and try to keep our home clean, our 3 cats and dog do not make it easy. I take care of the pool we got with the house (we didn't want one initially) but my wife's family likes to use it, I do whatever my wife asks of me and I enjoy taking care of her and our daughter but lately I've felt less joy because she acts as if I don't do anything at all.

I left my family back in the UK, I occasionally talk to my dad, I have a brother who suddenly stopped replying to me a few days before my daughter was born for an unknown reason, I haven't really got friends. And my main way of distracting myself is to play video games while my daughter sleeps but even that has become a problem because my wife gets irritated she doesn't get time to play games, she does. She just spends a lot of time getting frustrated with the games and then sits on tiktok half the time.

My wife works as that's the way she wanted it which is fine, I recently did some part time work and it was refreshing but I'm the last day my wife made a big stink about how she'd prefer if I didn't work and made me feel like shit for even wanting to bring in extra money.

Lately I've fell behind on cleaning and everything, started eating way worse than I normally do, I can't mow the lawn or be outside making sure everything is done like the pool, the weeds and her car clean because if I'm away from my wife and baby apparently I'm leaving her with the baby and she doesn't get to do anything. So I spend more time with our baby and the grass gets too long and it looks bad outside, I can't clean the house when the baby sleeps because my wife is worried I'll wake her up so I don't do it then, when she is awake I try but then I'm not with them enough and my wife can't do things she wants to do. So I feel like I can't do anything right and it's making me depressed and miserable,

Now I'll admit I can't stand mess in our house, dirty dishes, pet hair and dirt on the floor, unorganized rooms and whatnot to the extent I can't help but as I'm doing the cooking try to clean. It's all I'll think about as I'm doing other things.

I had a messed up childhood, abuse and sexual abuse, being starved, made to sit out in the rain with no key to my home, suffice to say I still struggle with extreme depression and I cannot hide the look on my face when I feel unhappy or hurt and it's hard to push the feelings down so I can carry on being this "amazing" dad and husband my wife tells her friends and family all the while making me feel useless and defeated when she's not feeling good.

I don't sleep enough each day, around 6 hours or 7 and I never mention If I'm feeling exhausted or tired because then my wife goes on a rant about how she's tired and feeling exhausted ( which I understand, she just gave birth 4 months ago and is breastfeeding and it's not easy) but she makes me feel awful for even feeling tired in my own head to the point I just push myself to do things all day never complain and just keep doing that.

I'm sorry if I make it sound like my wife's horrible, she isn't. I couldn't ask for a better wife and mom to my daughter, but lately she doesn't seem to care that I have any physical or mental issues myself, it always gets out on the back burner.

I've been feeling depressed to the extent I close my eyes and can't help but picture myself in terrible accidents and have intrusive thoughts of harming myself.

I'm not good at talking about how I feel with people, so bring all this up is hard for me and worries me I'll stress forget things or become to unsteady while speaking I'll just shut down

Sorry if this is not the right place for this and if stuff doesn't make sense I'll try and fill in with my information

My son is going into first grade in a few days. He's autistic and had a really hard time last year in kindergarten so I was pretty much on call all year in case he got sent home or had some other issue which happened pretty frequently.

This year he'll go to school in the morning and ABA in the afternoon and I'll have to do pickup and drop off for each so going back to work doesn't really feel like an option yet.

My question is what do you guys do while the kids are away to feel productive? There's chores and errands of course but I tend to mow through those pretty quickly. I get pretty down in the dumps when I run out of things to do and really has a negative impact on my self worth.

Any ideas for side hustles or ways to stay busy would be appreciated.

What's it like when you tell people you're a surfer and a SAHD?

I get a lot of raised eyebrows and snotty comments. I don't tell anyone I surf anymore. If you know the surf life, there isn't swell everyday and lots of flat spells where I'm not at the beach. But people watch Fast Times at Ridgemont High and assume surfers are all lazy bums.

Hey Gentlemen,

I’ve been a stay at home dad for so long that I almost have to stop and count the years. It has probably been 14 or 15 years now.

My wife and I both worked when our kids were little. We did daycare, then had an au pair. Eventually we realized that wasn’t how we wanted to raise our kids. We wanted one of us home full time. I was making decent money, but my wife’s career was really taking off. If we wanted to continue the life we were building, it was pretty clear which one of us should step away. So I became the SAHD. We have been incredibly fortunate as a family. Our kids are doing really well. We could not be more proud of them. I do not regret the decision, and the sacrifices have absolutely been worth it. Side note, I never pictured myself doing this…..and I’m a guy’s guy, sports, coaching, working with my hands, craft beer etc. That really has zero bearing on doing the job but just saying.

…..But now I’m almost 50. The kids are getting older, one in college and one only 2 years away….they aren’t even kids anymore! Plus, I’m looking at two elderly parents out of state that who are going to need more and more help. Sometimes it feels like the cycle never really ends. For most of my adult life, my role has been to facilitate everyone else’s life. Kids, house, schedules, family, whatever needs to happen, I make it happen. Then I try to find some time for myself somewhere in what is left. Oh and my wife is amazing and the absolute best partner in life and I am the luckiest man alive to call her my wife and mother of my children but this isn’t really about her, it’s about how this journey has been for me as an individual, if I can say that without sounding harsh.

I’m smart enough to know the things I probably need to do for myself. That really isn’t what I’m asking.
What I’m wondering is whether there is actually anyone else out there like me. I honestly cannot remember the last time I met another guy who was a SAHD, especially someone who is my age.

Sometimes I feel like there is literally nobody else who took this path as long as I have. Nobody around me can really relate to it. Because we are fortunate financially and have a great family, there is also this feeling that I should just be grateful and not say any of this out loud. I am beyond grateful. I would make the same decision in a heartbeat . But this is about how being a SAHD has affected me personally, for such a long time. I am going to try and build a life for myself going forward since I’m pretty much done being a SAHD…. Balance is gonna be more difficult than I thought going forward.
Lots of mixed emotions combined with real world acknowledgement of being a SAHD for so long.

I just sometimes wonder if there are any other guys out there who have lived something similar and can relate…..Anyone?

I’ve gotta get back to work. I’ve been a SAHD since covid but the kids are all into junior high now. I’m sick of asking for money, explaining my purchases, and having my partners family think i’m a deadbeat. I do all the cleaning, all the errands, all the laundry, all the school pick ups/events… and still this family thinks im lazy. They all have maid services. Not us.

But, how to get a job? Applying online is pointless and degrading. Why can’t you just apply for a job in a store? I’ve been out of the work force too long. i regret it.

rant over...

How do some of you SAHD's manage stress? I have been a sahd for 2 plus years now to a 3 and 5 year old and some days they do a number on me with the arguing and bugging.

I’ve been a SAHD for over 6 months and in these 6 months I can say only that my mental health, emotional and physical wellbeing has overall spiraled into an abyss. I used to have a straight forward path through life. Work jobby job, come home, help wife, repeat. Now that she has the better paying job, I just exist as this abstract to the world. I have no presence in anyone’s lives except for my kids. I hear people are concerned with the idea of there being “no more third spaces” that being somewhere you can go other than work or home without being expected to spend significant money, but what happens when you don’t even have a second space? I am a ghost of a man that’s only anchor to the world is raising kids. I love my family but I don’t know how much longer I can exist in this purgatory of household. Putting the kids in any sort of daycare is out of the question because putting 2 kids in there is almost more expensive than the money I’d make by working. All I do know for certain is that getting back into the workforce is going to be a shit show. Rambling concluded. I will now fade back into the nothingness that awaits me in day to day dad life

Hi dads, my wife and I are considering taking the leap soon ish. Main motivation is being able to have more family time, less stress and to really just enjoy this era as much as possible. I’m 31, and have one kid who is almost 15 months. Plan on having 1 or two more in the next 5 years or so. So my questions for the community are
1. Do you enjoy being a sahd? What are the joys and challenges?
2. Anything that I should consider that was hard to see from outside?
3. What planning steps did you take for returning to the workforce?