Full Time Fathers

I have privilege to meet up quite a few Full Time Fathers recently. There is even a “secret business men association”. A good name isn’t it. In our society, it is not even easy to be a full time mother; I guess it requires more courage and personal sacrifice to be a full time father.

Different from most of Full Time Mothers, who choose motherhood career right after their babies births, mostly of these dads had worked number of years, some of them reached in senior position, before they decided to a stay at home dad. Their children are above 5 to early teens. Mike Pearl once said, before two, a child shall be with his/her mother, after two, he/she shall be with father. There is definite place for Full Time Fathers especially today.

Mr Tan is one of such stay at home dad. He gives up his high flyer banking career, as in his words, he had earned more than enough. He is now homeschooling their two boys. Though he is at home, he does not do household duties as many Full time mothers do, he has domestic maid and his mother is helping him in homeschooling. Very lucky man he is.

Mr Lee was senior partner of a lawyer firm. Maybe due to the high stress level and often overtimes he had, he and his family had been struggling to keep “work and life” balance. He used to send his school age children by 7:00 am and would not see them till next morning, for by the time he came home, the children had gone to bed. The career just took so much tow on their family life. Lately he felt enough was enough. What he wants now is to spend more time together with his children and at his spare time, he starts to write some books.

Mr. Sim has similar situation as Mr Lee. Prior to a full time dad, he and his wife were both professionals with busy career and had little time for family and their three young children. He decides to “retire” early to look after their three young children. Mr Sim is a really househusband, he does cooking, cleaning and ironing and all other household duties.

Some may think it is one of the “Amos” ideas, no so, in fact, there are many Chinese Singaporean daddies choose to be a stay at home dad. A round applause for these fathers, will you? If more the fathers are family minded, we will have more happy family and happy children. The society we live in will be happier too, isn’t it? What will the Government think? Will they be labeled as "Ungainfully employed?"