Kurt Will was 42 years old when he packed in his career to look after his newborn.
At the time, he was working for Dow Jones on a fixed-term contract. The commute was grueling—a near-four-hour round trip—and his salary was practically the same as the cost of hiring a nanny.
Meanwhile, his wife had “the better career prospects” as an anti-trust in-house lawyer at Time Warner, he tells Fortune.
So it was “a pretty easy decision” for Will to stay home and raise his daughter—and two years later, his son.
He’s part of a growing number of fathers to take on the unpaid position of being a child’s chauffeur, nanny, cleaner, and personal cook—a role which historically fell firmly on the shoulders of mothers.
Today, dads make up 18% of stay-at-home parents, according to a Pew Research Center analysis.
But when Will took on the role almost two decades ago, stay-at-home fathers were few and far between—just 5% of fathers were stay-at-home dads at the turn of the millennium.
That number has nearly doubled over the past 30 years. “I have definitely seen more dads in the playgrounds at all hours of the day,” Will said.
Another of the new-age stay-at-home dads is Dave Murray Jones.
He had just hit pause on his advertising sales job to look after his third child, Peggy, while his wife, Meg, runs her own business, Postpartum Plan.
“Bonding with kids has been incredible—as has getting actively involved in the school work and the community,” he said. “The school now calls me as well as Meg if there is a problem and I have joined the class WhatsApp groups.”
Why the sudden uptick in stay-at-home dads?
According to Pew’s research, the share of fathers in the U.S. staying home to look after their kids was previously fueled by economic downturns, with the percentage of stay-at-home dads surging during the 2008 financial crisis.
But as the economy strengthened, the share of fathers in the primary caregiver role gradually diminished—until the pandemic hit.
Even in the U.K., research has shown the number of stay-at-home dads increased by a third during the pandemic, highlighting a global cultural shift as many men were compelled, for the first time, to juggle childcare duties while working remotely.
Unlike generations before, dads today aren’t looking after their children solely because they’ve lost their jobs to the latest crash or fallen ill.
The research shows that they are increasingly staying home for the sole purpose of caring for their families and homes, rather than because they are ill, retiring, or unable to find work.
Essentially, many dads today are intentionally choosing parenting over breadwinning.
Why the sudden change of heart? The handful of stay-at-home dads Fortune spoke to cited shifting expectations on men: to no longer be the man of the household and to unhealthily restrict their emotions, as a critical factor behind the growing number of dads embracing their paternal side.
“Men are starting to realize that missing crucial morning time and bedtime adds up,” Murray Jones says.
Courtesy of Kurt Will
Plus, more often than not, becoming a stay-at-home dad makes economic sense.
As the number of women forging formidable careers and out-earning their spouses rises, fathers are increasingly stepping in as the lower-earning parent to leave work and look after the kids.
“At that time my wife, Meighan, was a senior partner at the largest family law firm in the country—Schiller, DuCanto & Fleck LLP—and she wanted to pursue becoming the managing partner of the firm,” Frank Harmon, a managing director turned stay-at-home-dad, tells Fortune.
“It quickly became apparent the best answer was for me to become the primary caregiver so my wife could continue to develop her career and pursue her professional aspirations,” he adds. “Our perspective was, and still is, we co-chair our family together, meaning whoever is best suited for a role or responsibility is the one who should do it.”
“It’s not an understatement to say that behind every successful executive is a spouse that has the time and wherewithal to manage the household,” Will echoes.
The benefits outweigh the drawbacks
As with stay-at-home moms, the main drawback of giving up your day job to look after the kids is that it can be isolating.
“As a person who likes to socialize and engage in intelligent conversation, you’re stuck with two infants all day long,” Will warns. “The daily routine, especially when the kids were small, is mind-numbing.”
As stay-at-home dads are still relatively rare, it can also be tricky finding other like-minded adults to engage with.
In Harmon’s eyes, the winter is especially brutal for stay-at-home dads.
“In the summer, it’s easy to find someone to play golf, sail, or have lunch,” he says. But with the weather bad and golf out of the question, the colder months can be long and lonely.
The other obvious downside of giving up your career to become a stay-at-home dad is, frankly, giving up your career.
It’s why some fathers told Fortune they are keeping their foot in the door of the working world, by taking on side gigs or taking a specified amount of time off work to child-rear instead of indefinitely packing it in.
Courtesy of Dave Murray Jones
Ultimately, for all of the fathers Fortune spoke to, the drawbacks of becoming a primary caregiver were heavily outweighed by the bond they were able to establish with their little ones.
“The benefits of being a stay-at-home dad were more remarkable than I could have imagined,” says Jean-Louis Safari, who swapped working in the financial services industry with raising his kids in 2004.
“The time I have been at home has allowed me to grow closer than ever with my children,” he said. “Not only have I learned an incredible amount about each of them, but also about myself.”
Indeed, it’s great for the children to have their dad around—but it’s clear that the dad’s stint with child-rearing has been mutually beneficial for them too.
For one, Will highlights that spending time around the house, park, playground, and school run with his children trumps spending the day in a cubicle. It has also given him time to pursue his own interests and manage the family’s property portfolio.
“Being a stay-at-home dad made scheduling training runs, physical therapy sessions, and chiropractic appointments a convenience that would have been challenging if I was working full-time outside the home,” agrees Harmon.
Meanwhile, Murray Jones said that the six months he’s taken off work to watch over the latest addition to his family has been good for his marriage.
“It isn’t just for the kids but our relationship too,” he adds. “I’m lucky that my work has allowed me this much time off to support my wife and bond with the kids, and I think that more partners should be allowed this time as standard.”
In fact, not a single stay-at-home father that Fortune spoke to had any regrets about swapping sending emails for changing diapers.
What they’re doing after the big job
Eventually, children grow up and go to school, so the need to stay at home full-time can dwindle over time.
However, rejoining the workforce and reestablishing a career after taking time off to raise children can be a huge hurdle in itself—that is, for mothers at least.
For the most part, child-rearing hasn’t been detrimental to the careers of the stay-at-home dads Fortune spoke to.
Murray Jones said he was going back to his job, and Harmon joined the investment management firm Merrill as a private wealth manager a few years ago.
Meanwhile, Safari has supplemented his main gig in parenting with a side hustle.
“During my journey as a stay-at-home dad, I explored various avenues to maintain a balanced life while also contributing financially,” he says, adding he tried working as an Uber driver before becoming a “founding driver” for Rubi Rides—a rideshare service created specifically for children.
“The gig economy and solutions like Rubi are empowering fathers and stay-at-home parents to have the best of both worlds: being a primary caregiver while also bringing home a stable income,” he adds.
On the other end of the scale, Will’s daughter went off to college, yet he’s still looking after the home.
He hadn’t initially planned to be a stay-at-home dad forever. “When my wife and I started on this road, it was more like we would see how it went, you know we weren’t sure I could deal with being around an infant all day,” he says.
But as his children grew up, he didn’t feel himself yearning to return to his career.
Having done a PhD in international relations, before taking on a wide array of roles ranging from financial information to ski instructing, Will says he wasn’t “wedded” to any job or industry.
Plus, there was plenty of work at home for Will to get on with, including managing the couple’s properties and embarking on a full-gut renovation of a brownstone in Brooklyn.
Now, having just turned 60, he’s got another renovation under his belt—a house in the Berkshires that will occupy him for the next two to three years.
“Sometimes I miss not having had a rewarding career in whatever field, but things didn’t work out that way and I’m totally content with the way things worked out,” Will adds.
A version of this story originally published on Fortune.com on August 24, 2023.
