BBC Article: At-Home Daddying is Tiring and Rewarding

The media continues to spew out articles covering stay at home dads.  Many of the articles are cut from the same cloth…a dad forced into his role by the economy, ends up enjoying it, and now he thinks this is better than working in Finance.  Every once in a while, a refreshing and insightful article hits the news – like this one from BBC in London: Being a Stay-at Home Dad ‘Tiring But Very Rewarding.’

Now, I spent a semester abroad in London when I was in college.  Hitting the pubs, finding an after-hours spot, meeting girls, and eating on a budget was all I was focused on.  Now, if I were in London, I would seek out Thom Chesser, who sounds like he is corralling and connecting all of the involved fathers across London to provide them with an opportunity to socialize and support each other:

“If you go to a park there’ll always be a group of mums with babies chatting and having coffee. There’ll be some dads too, but they’ll be on their own – they’re less gregarious than women. So I’ve spent four years collecting them. If I see a dad with a buggy I’ll always go up and talk to them.”

“It would be lovely if more men got the chance to spend more time with their children. Fathers tend to take longer to bond with babies, so it can only be a positive. It’s tiring, but very rewarding thing. And even where dads do go to work, if they didn’t have to work such long hours it would make a big difference,” he added

Hats off to Chesser for taking the initiative of forming a dynamic community of dads in one of my favorite cities in the world, organizing a weekly playgroup aptly called Dads and Little ‘Uns, and making at home daddying a cool thing to do (which it certainly is!)…