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" We finally answer the question: What does a stay-at-home mom do? The reality is more complicated than you think.   Chapter 1: Our Survey Stay-at-Home Moms by the Numbers By Laura Vanderkam Staying at home: It&amp;#039;s the most important thing a woman can do\u2014or a cop-out. It&amp;#039;s a job description\u2014or a recipe for mind-numbing boredom. Stay-at-home mothers are equally lauded and adored, pitied and derided. In some parts of the country, staying at home is the norm; in other communities, it&amp;#039;s a rarity. And our culture still thinks it&amp;#039;s fine to ask mothers\u00A0this\u00A0frustrating and patronizing question: So what do you do all day? Redbookmag.com wanted to find out what life is really like for stay-at-home mothers. So we embarked on a massive survey\u2014the first of its kind\u2014that catalogued the specific activities that make up their days. We knew the traditional definition of &amp;quot;stay-at-home mom,&amp;quot;\u00A0the old-school homemaker,\u00A0was long gone, but we were surprised by what we found: In today&amp;#039;s economy, where so many of us are piecing together side hustles and various freelance opportunities to stay afloat, it turns out that staying at home has become a gig all on its own. Because most of today&amp;#039;s stay-at-home moms aren&amp;#039;t just taking care of their kids\u2014they&amp;#039;re caretaking\u00A0and\u00A0working.  Welcome to the Mom Gig, where we&amp;#039;ll explore all aspects of staying at home: what your kids think you do,\u00A0the four stay-at-home-mom types,\u00A0how to make $2 million from your side hustle,\u00A0and the newest stay-at-home moms\u2014dads.   For our study, we surveyed 558 women who self-identify as stay-at-home moms. (Potential respondents began by reading an introduction about the project; if they didn&amp;#039;t consider themselves stay-at-home moms,\u00A0they could quit.) We asked several questions about their lives and responsibilities, but we also requested they record their activities, hour by hour. We didn&amp;#039;t ask about a &amp;quot;typical&amp;quot; weekday; we asked about the previous day. Using hour-by-hour recollections of a specific\u00A0recent day avoids exaggerated answers. While it may feel like you spent 14 hours doing laundry, you probably didn&amp;#039;t. This approach is similar to the research I did for my 2015 book, I Know How She Does It (Portfolio/Penguin), about how working moms balance career and home lives. Our respondents&amp;#039; lives were incredibly diverse. One mom spent the day substitute teaching. Another milked goats and spent five hours building a tool shed. A third played tennis for three hours. There were a few throwback moments: &amp;quot;Sat down and had a cocktail after getting dinner in oven.&amp;quot; One mom reported some intense D.I.Y. projects: &amp;quot;Caulked backsplash in kitchen.&amp;quot; They breast-fed infants around the clock and changed diapers at 2 a.m.  Overall, their answers reveal surprising truths about modern families.   Our most striking finding\u00A0far and away\u00A0was the blurred line between staying at home and working. Many women called themselves stay-at-home mothers, but their time logs showed them working for pay. Almost two-thirds\u00A0of stay-at-home moms (62 percent) contribute to their household income, and 25 percent\u00A0said they ran a business from home. As I reviewed these time logs, I realized just how much untapped capacity is out there. Economists have talked a lot recently about the declining labor force participation rate; from these time logs, I know exactly where a portion of that labor force is: They are sitting in their living rooms researching how to buy and sell stuff off Craigslist. If more businesses could accommodate their time\u2014say, by creating jobs that allow working 15 to\u00A020 hours a week from home\u2014they could capitalize on this workforce.    The answer to that annoying and frequently\u00A0asked question (so\u2026\u00A0what do you do?) depends on household income. Well-to-do moms exercise, socialize, and run errands. Moms on the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum do an enormous amount of housework. (The majority of our respondents lived in households with annual incomes below $75,000. About 19 percent\u00A0were in households making less than $25,000 a year; fewer than 7 percent\u00A0reported households with incomes over $200,000.) The entire day can be consumed with vacuuming and cleaning, even though the house will just get dirty again.     Stay-at-home moms&amp;#039; happiness factor was another counterintuitive finding. In general, this was a very content group of 558 survey respondents, with one standout: Moms of four or more showed an outsized proclivity to be &amp;quot;very&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;extremely&amp;quot; happy. This was true despite the constant activity four or more children create\u00A0and these families&amp;#039; lower-than-average incomes.    This surprised me\u2014but I think I know why. In my previous studies of working moms, those who seemed happiest and least stressed didn&amp;#039;t try to create rigid schedules, where laundry was done at 5:30 a.m. and lunches were packed for the week by Sunday evening. Instead, they just rolled with life. Why worry about a few toys on the floor when you could relax with your family instead? Likewise, for stay-at-home moms, managing four or more children will mellow all but the most stubborn of perfectionists.    When you let go of life needing to happen at certain times in certain ways, you can enjoy the madness and the beautiful mess\u00A0and see and savor the small moments. Our respondents consciously tried to look at the bright side.\u00A0&amp;quot;Attempting to enjoy the quiet before #4 is born,&amp;quot; wrote one mom of three, of her time between 9 and\u00A010 p.m. This was her last entry: &amp;quot;Alarm going off at 4:45 a.m. to do it all again. :)&amp;quot;   Chapter 2: Modern Moms The Four Types of Modern Moms Our survey found that today&amp;#039;s stay-at-home moms fall into distinct categories. After parsing through the data, Laura Vanderkam noticed patterns and broke the group down into four types. About a third (34%) are Workers: They work on average 4.5 hours a day and contribute to their household income. Volunteers make up the second-largest category (23 percent). These women are heavily involved with school and activities; almost half (45 percent) feel as though their involvement helps make working moms&amp;#039; lives possible. Newbies\u2014moms with kids under 2\u2014comprise 19 percent\u00A0and see staying at home as temporary: 59 percent\u00A0plan to return to work. And finally, 12 percent\u00A0are Caregivers with special-needs children. Because of their responsibilities, they are more likely to be very or extremely stressed (39 percent) versus the overall sample (30 percent). Below, see how that plays out in the real world.  Getting pregnant wasn&amp;#039;t part of my master plan. Before I had my daughter DJ in 2013, I was clocking 80-hour weeks at my civil rights law practice. I loved the intellectual challenge of my career. But once I knew I was having a baby, my type\u00A0A personality kicked in. I&amp;#039;m from Haiti and speak Creole, and I can get by in French and American Sign Language.\u00A0\u00A0I wanted to make sure she learned those languages\u00A0too. I also wanted her to learn Mandarin Chinese and Spanish, because I thought they might be important for her future, given the global economy. Three months before she was born, I thought, Why aren&amp;#039;t online language lessons available for kids? I decided to create a business around that concept, and called it SmartCoos. Within a few weeks, I formed the prototype and we found our first investor. Soon I realized I was working three jobs: launching SmartCoos, keeping my law practice going, and caring for DJ. I knew I had to make a choice. The first six years of a child&amp;#039;s life are critically important.\u00A0How involved did I want to be? I decided to quit law to focus on SmartCoos. It would give me the freedom to work from home and allow me to be with DJ during her early years. Being a working stay-at-home mom is a double-edged sword.\u00A0I can curl up with DJ and read her a book during the day, but between my daughter and the business, I&amp;#039;m essentially parenting two babies. So I&amp;#039;ve created a strict structure in order to get it all done. I wake up at 4\u00A0a.m. and work for two hours. DJ gets up at 6 a.m.\u00A0and I take her for a run in the stroller,\u00A0then it&amp;#039;s breakfast and story\u00A0time. After that, I work while she naps, then lug my laptop along to her ballet class and playground time. As soon as her dad comes home, I&amp;#039;m like, &amp;quot;See ya later!&amp;quot; He takes over, and I head to my stand-up &amp;quot;desk&amp;quot; (the kitchen counter) and work until 10\u00A0p.m.  We launched SmartCoos nine months ago, and our monthly revenue is already around $20,000. But it can be dark at times. At one point early on, when I struggled to raise funds for the business, I looked at the grim statistics: So many new businesses fail, especially ones run by mothers and by black women. When the money ran low in July 2015, it took a lot of emotional strength to continue, but my partner was so supportive. &amp;quot;Babe, you&amp;#039;ve done a million things in your life,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;You can do this if you put your mind to it.&amp;quot; Now I finally feel like I&amp;#039;m approaching the other side. It&amp;#039;s one thing to fail when you&amp;#039;re the only person you&amp;#039;re accountable for, but when you take a leap from a stable career that helped provide for your family\u2026 that&amp;#039;s an insane amount of pressure. But I get to see my daughter&amp;#039;s growth every day, and it&amp;#039;s such a joy. \u00A0\u2014As told to Molly Triffin  I was only 16 when I got pregnant with my first child, a son. Five months along,\u00A0I lost him to an ectopic pregnancy. It made me want kids even more. It also made me decide to stay home with them. I was so scared to lose another child, and I wanted to make sure they were well taken care of. And it was just how I was raised\u2014a traditional Hispanic way of living. My dad was a farmhand, and my mom taught us that the husband works and you take care of the children and the house. A year and a half later, Hannah was born. Over the next five years, Haley, Heather, Holly, and Henry followed. I know it&amp;#039;s a big family in today&amp;#039;s world, but I&amp;#039;m one of nine kids and I like that feeling of unity. Even now, if it&amp;#039;s one person&amp;#039;s birthday, our whole extended family celebrates. It&amp;#039;s like, &amp;quot;Make sure you get a big cake, because we&amp;#039;re all coming!&amp;quot; I&amp;#039;m so used to a crowd that I honestly don&amp;#039;t know how to prep a small meal, and I cook mostly Mexican food because I can make big portions, like papas caldudas (a soupy-ish potato and ground beef mix), enchiladas, or carne guisada\u00A0(meat with gravy\u00A0over rice and beans). Our kids are always on the go, which means I&amp;#039;m always on the go. I&amp;#039;m at the PTA meetings; I help the school librarian and volunteer at picture day. I&amp;#039;m also in charge of the school store that sells snacks, like popcorn, chips, and juice, and I&amp;#039;m the team mom for my kids&amp;#039; softball leagues. I&amp;#039;m in the dugout helping kids get on the field at the right time, giving them water, ordering T-shirts, making sure the uniforms are intact, passing along questions from other parents to the coaches, and planning the end-of-season party. In between games, I pitch in at the concession stand, making snow cones and nachos. If I could be at school all day with them, I would\u2014I just love them that much. And since Sinton is a small town, where everyone knows everyone, I end up stepping in for other moms. A lot of my friends work, so they ask me for help picking up and dropping off their kids. Sometimes I think we should have waited longer to start a family. But I wanted to be able to grow with my kids and keep up with them. I can still jump in the pool and run the bases with my daughters. A lot of my friends ask, &amp;quot;How do you do it?&amp;quot; I say, &amp;quot;I just do it. There&amp;#039;s no time to think. I just get things done.&amp;quot;\u00A0\u2014As told to Molly Triffin   When you&amp;#039;re a stay-at-home mom, every day has the same schedule. As soon as my 19-month-old twin boys and 3-year-old daughter wake up at 7 a.m., I change them and give them milk and breakfast. While they&amp;#039;re eating, I prepare one big vegetarian meal for lunch and dinner, like vegetables and tofu or fried rice. Then I tell them stories and we\u00A0sing songs, practice their ABCs, and play Legos. We speak in Mandarin at home. From 11 to\u00A012, the twins nap and I read stories to my daughter. Then she goes down for a nap, and I can finally relax. After they wake up, it&amp;#039;s lunchtime. In the afternoon we might go to the park, or the boys might play while my 3-year-old watches TV. From 5:30 to\u00A07:30 I take them to music and movement class. Then I&amp;#039;ll give them dinner, put the twins to bed, and hang out with my daughter. They&amp;#039;re all asleep by about 9:30. And I constantly clean throughout the day, too. It&amp;#039;s stressful to work a 15-hour day with only a half hour to rest, but I can take the pressure because my kids are just so cute. Still, being a stay-at-home mom is work and should be respected. My husband takes me for granted because he&amp;#039;s the one making money; he feels like I should do all the housework and not complain about it. (At least he does the laundry!) I don&amp;#039;t have time alone until the kids are all asleep at night, and I can&amp;#039;t go out shopping, or with friends, unless I take the kids with me\u2014but he&amp;#039;s watching TV or reading when he gets home from work. When I tell him I&amp;#039;m overwhelmed\u2014a lot of times I&amp;#039;m too tired to even have sex with him\u2014he&amp;#039;ll say, &amp;quot;Why don&amp;#039;t you go back to work? We can hire a nanny.&amp;quot; But I don&amp;#039;t want to. My kids only have one childhood, and I want to spend it with them. I would love to work from home part-time, but I was a nurse before I became a mother, and nursing is impossible to do part-time. Hopefully I&amp;#039;ll start working again once they&amp;#039;re in school. Right now I&amp;#039;m just trying to do my best to be a good mom, and I&amp;#039;m proud that I can do all of this on my own. \u2014As told to Molly Triffin  Four years ago, I walked into my first parent-teacher conference at my daughter&amp;#039;s Montessori preschool expecting to be told\u00A0I had a gifted child. Ameera, then 2 1/2, was very organized\u00A0and always the leader on playdates. She seemed like an advanced baby: At 3\u00A0months old, she would raise each arm to allow me to put her hands through her sleeves. But that wasn&amp;#039;t what happened. &amp;quot;I think you need to have Ameera evaluated for a behavioral disorder,&amp;quot; the teacher said. Apparently\u00A0Ameera wasn&amp;#039;t following instructions in class;\u00A0rarely spoke;\u00A0and distracted the other kids by jumping on tables, making noise, and running from room to room. She was hyper at home, too, but I just figured she would grow out of it. I broke down crying right there in front of the teacher. After three months and several tests, Ameera was eventually diagnosed with a form of autism called PDD (pervasive developmental disorders). The doctor explained that she was so neat because her brain was in chaos, and that although she seemed to be a leader, the reality was that she didn&amp;#039;t understand how to socialize. That became increasingly apparent: In public, Ameera was starting to be anxious and awkward, flapping her arms, unable to speak. When Ameera was born, I&amp;#039;d quit my marketing career, but just before she was diagnosed I&amp;#039;d started going on job interviews to return to the workforce. We desperately needed a second income to supplement my husband&amp;#039;s job as a music producer. I felt so lost that I cried in bed every night. Should I stay home or go back to work? About a week after Ameera&amp;#039;s diagnosis, I woke up at 4 a.m., sure I had to put my daughter first. When other people find out I&amp;#039;m a stay-at-home mom, they assume I&amp;#039;m taking the easy way out. At Ameera&amp;#039;s school, other moms are dressed in their work clothes, looking so proper, and they&amp;#039;ll give me a glance, like I&amp;#039;ve let myself go because I&amp;#039;m in a ponytail and jeans. I try not to let it get to me, but in order to live off a single income\u2014and pay out-of-pocket for tests and doctor&amp;#039;s appointments that aren&amp;#039;t covered by insurance\u2014we&amp;#039;ve had to give up a lot. We sold one of our cars. We don&amp;#039;t take vacations or go out. I completely stopped shopping for myself.  I feel really overwhelmed sometimes, but staying home allows me to help Ameera in a way I never would have been able to otherwise. I facilitate her daily cognitive, behavioral, and speech therapy appointments. I&amp;#039;ve learned strategies to help her speak and make eye contact. I extensively researched her condition\u00A0and put her on a special diet. I&amp;#039;m honestly working harder than when I had a full-time job. But it&amp;#039;s worth it to see my daughter progressing. Not only was she invited to two birthday parties this year\u2014a first for her\u2014but her PDD diagnosis has been removed and she was mainstreamed just in time for kindergarten. \u2014As told to Molly Triffin    Chapter 3: The Kids&amp;#039; POV What Do Stay-at-Home Moms Do All Day? We asked the experts: kids.          Chapter 4: My Sacrifice I Didn&amp;#039;t Choose This Memoirist Alysia Abbott didn&amp;#039;t set out to be a stay-at-home mom. But when her special-needs son&amp;#039;s caregiver could no longer care for him, Alysia found she had no other choice.  If you were to see me in the Target parking lot near my home in Massachusetts with my blue Subaru Outback and my two school-aged kids, you&amp;#039;d probably never guess that I had an unconventional upbringing. My childhood looked nothing like my children&amp;#039;s.\u00A0My mother died in a car crash when I was 2, leaving me to be raised in 1970s San Francisco with my single gay father, a struggling poet and critic. As a kid, I spent more time at smoke-filled poetry readings than at playdates. I was taught to pee standing up\u00A0and urged to forgo my dreams of being a princess\u2014Princesses are so boring! Don&amp;#039;t you want to be President?\u2014because my dad wanted me to be a feminist\u00A0and was\u00A0more concerned with the literary arts than the domestic ones. Here&amp;#039;s what I never learned: how to clean a floor, bake a cake, sew a stitch, remove a stain. What did we know of mothers in our house, let alone\u00A0stay-at-home\u00A0mothers? Yet here I am, in this parking lot with my Subaru and two kids,\u00A0appearing for all intents and purposes like any stay-at-home mom struggling with her oversize\u00A0shopping cart. When I met my husband 15 years ago, I was working at the New York Public Library by day and pursuing an MFA degree by night. I quit my job to freelance after we married. I had one child, and then, two years later, another\u2014all while producing segments for the local public radio station and writing reviews and essays for magazines. In 2013 I published a memoir, which took me on tour to bookstores and universities around the country. After the tour, I began teaching writing at a Boston literary nonprofit, cofounded a storytelling project, started to think about my second book, and continued to regularly publish magazine pieces.  But despite my bustling career, recent circumstances have conspired to keep me at home and away from the work that makes me feel whole. While I already do most of the house management and upkeep, like many women I know\u2014my husband, an assistant professor at a local university, is working on an ambitious book project with a tight deadline and at the office all day and night\u2014my stay-at-home status is a new development, and one that comes with a catch. My second child, a son named Finn, is not as low-maintenance as our first. At 15 months he was diagnosed with autism and developmental delays. Seven years later, he still can&amp;#039;t speak, use the toilet, or dress himself. Unlike his older sister, who composes eloquent letters to explain why she&amp;#039;s upset, Finn will show his frustration by yanking my hair, biting my arm, or forcefully grabbing the collar of my sweater. Sometimes he does this to his sister, his teacher, or\u2014on an especially bad day\u2014to a passing stranger. Last fall, he kicked his beloved nanny in the face, sending her to the hospital with a nosebleed.  Finn doesn&amp;#039;t have &amp;quot;special&amp;quot; needs. He has great and urgent ones. And because my husband is gone many nights and weekends for work, and because the nanny who loves my son has been on and off medical leave and may be unable to continue caring for him for much longer, there&amp;#039;s no one available to manage Finn but\u2026 me. He needs someone to take him to the neurologist, to figure out which combination of medications will help get his aggression under control, to figure out the best school to fit his profile and how to get it paid for. My daughter also needs me, of course; someone has to keep the house ordered (fridge stocked, calendar updated) to counter the chaos brought on by my husband&amp;#039;s absence and Finn&amp;#039;s volatility.  To do all of this\u00A0I&amp;#039;ve had to put aside my career, at least temporarily. I don&amp;#039;t know how long I&amp;#039;ll have to play this role, but I feel like I&amp;#039;m gasping for air, drowning in an all-encompassing version of mommyhood that&amp;#039;s unnatural to me. I greatly admire parents who keep the dressers stacked with freshly laundered clothes, the tables set with freshly cooked meals each night, but this was never my dream job, neither is it one at\u00A0which I excel. I&amp;#039;m a haphazard cook and tend to bungle holidays and school events that require craftiness. Snow days, sick days, and long weekends fill me with dread. What&amp;#039;s most painful isn&amp;#039;t that I have to concern myself with all of these household and parental tasks, great and small. Ultimately they must be done for the health of the family I love very much. And I know we&amp;#039;re lucky\u2014many families can&amp;#039;t afford to have a parent stay home, even temporarily. It&amp;#039;s just that I can still see, with so much clarity, my shadow life, my shadow self, the life I imagined for myself back in grad school, who seemed so viable even a year ago. That self would have started the second book. She would apply to writers&amp;#039; residencies and better teaching jobs. She would congratulate you on your latest review, connect you with an editor friend, blurb your book, sit in the front row at your reading\u2014in short, be a good colleague and member of the literary community. This person isn&amp;#039;t so much gone as she is offstage, waiting for her cue. I want to be ready for her. I still teach one night a week and a couple of mornings a month; preparing my lectures feels like prayer. I try to stay active on social media to remind editors, agents, and colleagues that my absence is only temporary, that I can still participate in the cultural conversation. I know that a person&amp;#039;s creative and professional goals don&amp;#039;t disappear simply because that person is needed elsewhere, but the embers must be fanned so they don&amp;#039;t burn out. Oftentimes\u00A0reading about others&amp;#039; flourishing careers causes me psychic pain: I feel like I&amp;#039;m watching my alternative lives unfurl from behind soundproof glass. But I keep reminding myself that this state of affairs will not be forever. I know we will find reliable help\u00A0and behavioral solutions\u00A0for our challenging but still very loved son. There is the real me who can peacefully coexist with the version of me who is needed at home right now. I will keep her alive. I will not let her down.    Chapter 5: Dadlands The Secret Lives of Stay-at-Home Dads The new stay-at-home mothers might just be fathers. Brooklyn dad Tom Shone reports from the wilds of his local playground scene. A few months before my daughter was born, I saw a guy feeding his baby on the subway. His baby harness looked like something James Cameron would come up with: an assortment of toggles, bolts, buckles, and straps in gunmetal gray. In one seamless move, like a Transformer on maternity leave, he took the empty bottle from his baby&amp;#039;s mouth, inserted a pacifier, refilled the bottle with milk, and reinserted it. Furiously, I took mental notes. There it was, sitting right across from me: the new masculine ideal. Mr. Mom. Stay-at-home dad. Jock with a wok. Groom with a broom. I&amp;#039;d seen them in the pages of Business Week and Fortune\u2014Carly Fiorina&amp;#039;s husband,\u00A0Frank; Marissa Meyer&amp;#039;s husband, Zachary; Meg Whitman&amp;#039;s husband, Griffith\u2014with their aprons and tanned forearms and smiles that let you know how okay with this they really are, and how many ideas for tech start-ups they had on the way to pre-school this morning.  Cut to\u00A0nine months later. My wife, Kate, who works in PR for a big luxury brand, is away on a business trip. I&amp;#039;m in our neighborhood park, and our 5-month-old daughter is screaming\u2014because I have her on her back, or possibly because I gave her a sugared doughnut, or because she needs changing. A woman gives me a kind, pitying smile that says: So nice to see a man doing that. When talking to the other moms, I must adopt a manner of smiley inoffensiveness\u00A0to avoid the impression I am hitting on them. Welcome to the strange, self-hating world of the stay-at-home dad.  &amp;quot;It can be pretty solitary,&amp;quot; says Jack Howard-Potter, a sculptor and father of a 6-year-old girl and a 2-year-old boy. His wife is an attorney at a major Manhattan law firm; they decided early on that Jack would stay with the kids. &amp;quot;I remember when my wife had just gone back to work, and I thought, I got this;\u00A0I can do this.&amp;quot; After a couple of weeks, he felt isolated and alone. &amp;quot;My wife said, &amp;#039;Listen, you&amp;#039;ve got to meet other people. Go to a baby sign language class.&amp;#039;&amp;quot; He was horrified\u2014the class seemed ridiculous. But he went anyway\u00A0and sat in a circle with three moms while their babies were taught rudimentary sign language. &amp;quot;It was really at that class where I realized this was about my daughter, not about me,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;I had to put my own ego aside.&amp;quot;  I get that isolation, denial, and ego breakdown. In my case, the denial goes like this: I&amp;#039;m not a stay-at-home dad. I have a writing career! I look after our daughter when Kate works late or goes away for work. I do the cooking and have dinner waiting for Kate when she gets home from work, like a good &amp;#039;50s\u00A0sitcom housewife. But stay-at-home dad? Even for me, the term conjures up some poor schlub in a V-neck covered with Cheerios who cannot get his act together. I know I shouldn&amp;#039;t feel this way. Raised by a single mom, the child of second-generation feminism, I heartily approve of what author Lisa Mundy called &amp;quot;the big flip&amp;quot; in her 2012 book The Richer Sex\u2014the fact that women are now the primary breadwinners in\u00A040 percent of U.S. households. There are as many as 2 million stay-at-home\u00A0dads in the U.S. now, nearly double the number in 1989. The only problem with those statistics is that my father-in-law\u2014or anybody over 50\u2014doesn&amp;#039;t seem to have read them. &amp;quot;My mom still thinks that me staying home isn&amp;#039;t a worthwhile endeavor,&amp;quot; says Jack. &amp;quot;She doesn&amp;#039;t get that I want to be there for my kids in a way that my father wasn&amp;#039;t. This notion that I&amp;#039;m a bum is something\u00A0I deal with every single day.&amp;quot; The generation gap is more than just a matter of image. Among\u00A0the stay-at-home dads I know, a high proportion\u2014for whatever reason\u2014did not have a close relationship with our fathers. We were imprinted with our mother&amp;#039;s caregiving style\u00A0and now get to make up for Dad not being around by effectively playing both. When my wife is home, she is the star in my daughter&amp;#039;s eyes\u2014I&amp;#039;ve got the traditional supporting role; sometimes just a walk-on cameo\u2014but when Kate goes to work, suddenly I&amp;#039;m\u00A0Leo DiCaprio, Johnny Depp, and George Clooney rolled into one. It stays that way until Kate gets home, at which point I go back to being a walk-on. Until now, few fathers have experienced that.  &amp;quot;In some ways I know my kids better than my wife does,&amp;quot; says my friend Tim, another stay-at-home father. He quit his copywriting gig to pursue a photography career when his daughter, Georgia, now 4, was born. His wife, Julie, is an executive at a large media company. &amp;quot;There are these little heroic moments where I feel like a kickass dad,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;But usually it&amp;#039;s for &amp;#039;guy&amp;#039; things. Like when I was at the playground and my daughter slipped off the edge of a staircase and I caught her with one hand, which felt really athletic.&amp;quot;  The other day, a stay-at-home dad was a contestant on Jeopardy. Alex Trebek could barely disguise his glee. &amp;quot;Was that something you wanted to do? Or was it forced on you?&amp;quot; he asked. When a question about fish sticks came up, he teased, &amp;quot;I bet you cook those a lot for your kids, eh?&amp;quot; Online message boards lit up: &amp;quot;He&amp;#039;s calling him lazy\u2026 the implication is that stay-at-home parents don&amp;#039;t do anything but sit around all day,&amp;quot; protested a commenter named Kayaker on a board at the pop culture trivia site TheStraightDope. &amp;quot;I just felt sorry for the poor bastard,&amp;quot; Tim said. We were having coffee at our local coffee shop, strollers in tow. &amp;quot;He got the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory answer right on the daily double,&amp;quot; I reminded him. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s true,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;No way he would&amp;#039;ve known about that if he weren&amp;#039;t a stay-at-home dad.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Yeah, maybe.&amp;quot; No way we would have been watching Jeopardy at 3:30 in the afternoon if we weren&amp;#039;t, either. But we let that go.    Chapter 6: Mompreneurs &amp;quot;I Make $2 Million\u2026 at Home&amp;quot; As Told to Melissa Walker Utah mom Christine Krogue always wanted to stay home with her kids. But she never imagined they would inspire a wildly lucrative career. I get all my work done while taking care of four boys: a 5-year-old who&amp;#039;s with me half the day, another in elementary school, and two middle schoolers. During short breaks throughout the day, I&amp;#039;ve been able to grow a business\u2014one that did more than $2 million in sales last year. I got married during my senior year of college, where I majored in marketing communications, and three years later, at 24, I had my twin boys, Ryan and Colin. After they arrived, I knew I wanted to stay at home, just like my mom did. But by the time my fourth son, Jackson, was born in 2010, after seven years of staying with the kids full\u00A0time, I longed for a working life. I&amp;#039;d heard about moms who invented products and wondered if I could do that\u00A0too. My kids were always pulling off their socks in the winter: What about a pair of baby pants with socks sewn onto the bottoms? I found fabric on eBay and searched online for a patternmaker and someone to build the prototype. Five months later, a company called ProtoSew made the first pair of pants\u2014what I called Baby Undersocks. I customized the socks to be thicker and added grip to the bottoms, then searched for a graphic designer to create the product packaging. Next, I found a local sewing firm to make 1,000 units, which I began to sell through a simple website I created using Shopify. I joined Facebook groups and online forums for stay-at-home-mom entrepreneurs\u00A0and started to build my business, thanks to the guidance of the women I met there. Getting people to try the product was key, so I sent samples to popular family bloggers; that earned me my first few customers. Next, I set up an Amazon seller&amp;#039;s account for Baby Undersocks and started to offer them on daily deal sites with huge followings. From there, sales went through the roof. My husband, John, was always supportive of my ideas, but at one point he looked at the numbers and said, &amp;quot;Oh, wow\u2014this is really making money!&amp;quot;  Since launching Baby Undersocks, I&amp;#039;ve developed seven more products\u2014including toys and laundry softener balls\u2014and named my business Mama Moon Boutique. For each new prototype, I start with a small number of samples that I can risk losing money on. If we get enough orders, I stock more. After six years, I&amp;#039;m now up to $2 million in annual sales. Last year, after the cost of the goods, marketing, storage, and other expenses, our profit was $650,000. I pay myself $68,000 annually, a figure suggested by our accountant for the best tax positioning, and much of the rest of the profit goes back into the business. I&amp;#039;m also able to save money for retirement and invest for my kids. I had no idea when I started this that my company would be such a huge source of security for my family, and I feel so grateful to be able to provide that while also setting my own schedule. When people ask for advice for starting their own companies from home, I tell them not to be intimidated. The Internet makes it so easy to research the entire process. And I don&amp;#039;t get it\u00A0all done during nap\u00A0time: John takes over bedtime most nights so I can get back online and handle customer service emails or communicate with suppliers. But after school, when the kids get home, I&amp;#039;m there to make them a snack, help them with homework, or shuttle them to soccer and piano. The boys still think of me as just Mom; for them, nothing has changed as the company has expanded. Well, almost nothing\u2014I&amp;#039;ve overheard them proudly telling people about me. &amp;quot;My mom owns her own business,&amp;quot; they&amp;#039;ll say. In those moments, I&amp;#039;m excited to set an example for them\u00A0and show them that ambition and hard work can lead to great things.    "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.redbookmag.com/life/mom-kids/a43578/stay-at-home-mom-survey/>