How Stay-at-Home Dads Bounce Back From Career Hiatus

Oct. 28, 2010— -- After 19 years at a major newspaper, Ken Kaplan accepted a buyout so that he could shift his career and spend more time with his two young children, now 9 and 14 years old.

That decision made Kaplan, a Boston resident, the primary caregiver in his household of four.

"I thought I owed it to myself to have some time with the kids," says Kaplan. As the children began heading off to school, "I sort of felt like an absentee father being at work during dinnertime. For many years, I felt cut out of their lives."

As the economy continues to putter along, households are rethinking their mechanics and shifting gears, allowing more dads to embrace the role of Mr. Mom. And, like the women before them, some men have been left wondering how to return to the labor market after a short- or long-term stint at home taking care of the kids..

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the 2009 unemployment rate for women was 2.2 percentage points lower than the rate for men, revealing one of the largest work force gender gaps ever.

High unemployment has hit both men and women, with men numerically bearing the brunt of the impact as the recession continues to snatch more jobs from men than women.

In September, the unemployment rate for men 20 years old and up stood at 8.9 percent, a few paces above the 7.2 unemployment rate for women in the same age bracket.

A layoff took systems analyst Raymond Gordon, who lives in Atlanta, out of the work force in early 2009. While he searched for a job that would take advantage of his skills, he found himself building stronger ties with his two children, including a young son for whom he has custody every other week.

"The time with your children you can't get back," he says.

The number of stay-at-home dads rose to 158,000 in 2009, a bit of a jump from the 140,000 married men who spent at least one year at home in 2008 caring for children under 15 while their wives worked.

The stay-at-home ratio for moms to dads continued to shrink, moving from 38 to 1 in 2008 to 32 to 1 in 2009.