Why is the Kitchen the Loneliest Room for a Stay-at-Home Dad?

After mealtime, I’m the only one left

Hello, Summer Sojourners!

Below is a repost of something I wrote for Medium that I felt deserved better than the crickets it received from the algorithm on that platform. Because of the personal nature of this essay and accompanying poetry comics, I am putting most of it behind the paywall.

The Loneliest Room

I don’t know a lot of other stay-at-home dads. That’s not true. I know of several stay-at-home dads, but I don’t really know any—not in a way that makes me feel part of any kind of community.

This isolation has three primary causes.

One: I’m an introvert and have a difficult time seeking out and befriending strangers.

Two: I grew up and lived most of my life in a high-demand religion, where I learned that God had ordained women to be caregivers and men to be breadwinners. I was taught that men just weren’t capable of the kind of nurturing that came naturally to women. Fathers could never be as close to their children as mothers. Any deviance from this natural order was an affront to God. Even though I’ve long since rejected those ideas, they still fuck me up.

Three: The patriarchy. There just aren’t that many stay-at-home dads in the United States. Our numbers may be growing, and many men my age and younger may be breaking out of toxic masculinity and toxic religious beliefs, but male caregivers are still an oddity.

I’m not even a stay-at-home dad as much as I’m a work-from-home dad. In addition to doing the majority of the caregiving and housework, I also work to help support our family as a freelance copywriter, illustrator, poet, and cartoonist.