Those of us who have lived a long time can look back at social change and how it affected the family, the community, and, subsequently, our practices. The impact of these changes on our society can be mind-boggling.
The recent recession has led to an increase in the number of stay-at-home fathers, many of whom experience stigma because of their nontraditional roles. How can we help fathers who find themselves in these roles because of a work-related transition?
Dr. Paul Fink
The question was inspired by a paper by Aaron B. Rochlen, Ph.D., and his colleagues, "Stay-at-Home Fathers’ Reasons for Entering the Role and Stigma Experiences: A Preliminary Report."
Dr. Rochlen and his colleagues recruited 207 men from stay-at-home father blogs, support/play groups, and forums. Most of the men were white and heterosexual, and had middle to high incomes. The participants were evaluated based on their completion of several scales, including the 12-item Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support and the 5-item Satisfaction With Life Scale. They also were asked several questions, including whether they had experienced an incident they consider to be stigma-related because of their role as stay-at-home fathers.
The findings were sobering: Thirty-six percent of the stay-at-home fathers surveyed got reactions from other adults reflecting "a general prejudice toward men in traditionally female roles." Furthermore, men who reported experiences that were stigmatizing also experienced weak social support – which predicts negative physical and psychological adjustment for stigmatized groups such as people who are HIV positive, single mothers living in poverty, and people with mental illness (Psychol. Men Masc. 2010;11:279-85).
This stigmatization has been occurring while more and more fathers are opting to make this choice ("Current population survey, 2006 Annual Social and Economic Supplement," Washington: U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census. The recession of 2008-2009 (and the current economic aftershocks) have exacerbated these trends, so that we now have 158,000 stay-at-home fathers.
The Male Ego
The issue of what it means to be a "man" is one that we deal with regularly in psychotherapy. A male measures his manhood and is instantly concerned that he not do anything that undermines his power. Any insult or disrespect must be responded to, and he must be competitive with all men (and sometimes women) in his sphere.
If a man feels put down, he must retaliate to regain his status, that is, his feeling of being "man enough." Men in marriage want to feel in control – and given the large number of domestic violence cases in America, between 3 and 10 million per year – we know that some men lose control if they feel that the woman in the house is becoming too controlling or too powerful.
In short, it takes a certain kind of man to agree to stay home and take care of the children – in other words, to go against traditional cultural and gender norms. Such circumstances often prove so humiliating to the man, who feels he has lost his manhood, that they might cause a psychiatric disorder. I have never seen a couple in therapy in which the issue of control was not an essential part of the reason they had sought treatment.
Another issue that is a manifestation of these inner conflicts is erectile dysfunction. Men suffer a great deal if their penises do not work right. We know that there are many more men with erectile dysfunction than we thought just by noting the large number of prescriptions for Viagra and Cialis sold in this country. In the 50 years that I have been doing therapy, I have had a great many men worrying about the size of their penises. This is another way of expressing feelings of inadequacy.
I have digressed from the issues of stay-at-home fathers explored in the paper, because it does not raise any of these issues and remains very superficial in terms of trying to understand what is going on in these men. The authors do get close to the underlying issues as they examine the problem of stigma that stay-at-home fathers experience. Most of the stigma is expressed by stay-at-home moms, which can be quite humiliating for the man who is trying to be a good dad to his children and to take care of the house, the meals, the laundry, and so on.
Fifty percent of this perceived stigma fell into two major categories. The first is subsumed under ignorance of, or unfamiliarity with, the stay-at-home father role. The stigmatizer appears to have no familiarity or experience with a male serving as the primary caretaker of the children.