What do you think of this modern phenomenon? 

I assume you mean "stay at home" and not "work at home". There is a huge difference. The rest of this post will assume "stay at home" homemaker watching the kids.


First of all, if the dad is staying home (to watch the kids, rather than to work) doesn't it usually imply the wife is out working? Usually it's for a practical reason: she can easily earn more money than her husband (since the modern education system, K thru college, is tailored to the female mind. So the woman gets better grades, is more likely to go to college as a result, etc.)

Welfare is never so complete as to pay ALL your bills 100%. Depending on the state you live in and how much you earn, you might get food stamps, free healthcare, maybe a free phone -- but you're usually on your own for toiletries, non-prescription drugstore products (Nyquil, vicks vapo rub, aspirin, hydrogen peroxide, etc.), clothing, household goods, gasoline, utilities, house/car maintenance, furniture, car(s), toys, TV, any cable/Netflix/Internet subscriptions or entertainment, etc. I have some relatives in Illinois (a "blue state") so I would know! If they don't give it to you in Illinois, you probably can't get it anywhere.

So unless a close family member is subsidizing the family so that BOTH parents can stay at home, living off welfare in abject poverty, one of the couple has to go out and work. Having the wife do the working outside the home is backwards and most disordered.

Any "man" who considers (much less agrees to) such an arrangement shouldn't be considered a man at all. So his wife will go out and interface with the world at large, earning a living, while he stays home and concerns himself with domestic affairs? Insanity! If God wanted him to fill that role, He would have given "him" a uterus so he could bear children. The one who stays home and raises the children should also be the one (mother) who bears them. We're talking about nature here.

What happens when the woman gets pregnant? They both stay home and starve to death and end up on the street? Or do they just use birth control with "economic hardship" as an excuse?

Either way, I'd say: man up, pull yourself up by something or other, and make something of yourself so you can support your family! It's a grave obligation for every father.

And if you're having *any* difficulties along these lines, make sure you start by selling any computer or video games and/or systems -- and any other immature "toys" unworthy of a grown man -- if you have them. That includes boats, motorcycles, DVD collections, comic books, collectibles, and any other expensive hobbies. You can use the time you save to build up a real career so you can support your family properly!

In fact, I bet most men who want to stay home (while their wife goes out and earns "good money") probably have a well equipped "man cave" with many toys of this nature. They are happy to surrender their manhood/dignity in this manner, because they are immature overgrown boys to begin with.

PS --
God imposed one punishment on Adam (he would have to work)
God imposed two punishments on Eve (she would be under her husband's authority, and would have pain in childbirth)

We all castigate and look down upon (and rightly so) woman who are feminist, headstrong, who won't submit to male authority.
We all castigate and look down upon (and rightly so) women who use birth control and/or abortion to have zero children despite having plenty of "relationships" with men.

So if we chastise women for casting off the punishments imposed on them by God, why shouldn't we castigate men as well who similarly refuse to bear the punishment imposed on them by God?

"He who will not work, neither let him eat." -St. Paul

What do you think of this modern phenomenon?

There would have to be a good reason (extenuating circuмstances) and a careful evaluation that the situation is not leading either the husband or wife into other sins resulting from the situation.
As a trend, it's one more thing contributing to the breakdown of traditional families and parental roles.

Of course there would have to be good cause, that was my point.  Too often people demonize someone not following their concept of "normal", I'm just pointing out that there are possibly good reasons for a man to stay at home, regardless of whether or not his wife goes out to work.

If a man sits at home on the sofa all day guzzling beer rather than working a job "beneath" him, thereby forcing his wife to work to pay the bills, then certainly he should be raked over the coals.  Again, and again, and again.

I've not even heard of this as a "trend". I wonder when it started, is it really a "trend"?

By the way, YES it's a trend, especially in 2018 with over 60% of college students being female, the current education system which favors (and caters to) the female mind and way of looking at things, etc. Women end up with better school grades, higher educations, and often even more ambition to succeed in a career than many men, who are overgrown boys into sports, video games, etc.

But let's take the "reductio ad absurdam" here -- reduce this situation to its absurd conclusion to demonstrate how wrong it is.

Is the wife in this situation going to follow her husband as leader of the home in a docile manner? Is he going to make the major and final decisions about how money is spent in the household --- when SHE worked day in and day out to earn it? Will he have to ask her for an "allowance" of spending money, thus giving her a certain power over him? He'll certainly have to stay on her good side. How can he have any authority over her, when all the power is in her hands?

And what happens in this "sometimes justifiable arrangement" when the wife gets pregnant? They aren't using mortally sinful birth control, I assume. It's certainly not good for the baby emotionally to NEVER get to breastfeed from his mother, not even for a few weeks or months. Besides the usual health reasons (breast milk is made for humans with advanced brains, cow's milk is made for young calves that need to fatten up fast) there are serious emotional bonds that happen during those hours spent "wasted" breastfeeding a baby. God designed that system for a reason. That's what breasts are for! The man might stay at home, but he can't become the baby's mother.

You can't just flip two entire roles and expect things to work out. The gender roles go deep into the natures of both men and women. If you're going to switch the roles, you'd have to change a bunch of biology and hormones as well.

The gender roles aren't superficial like "One person goes to pick up the fried chicken, the other person needs to finish the dishes and set the table". In that situation, either sex could do either. Is the woman at work just like a man at work? Of course not. She turns her cubicle into a little "home" filled with family pictures and cute decorations. Women do this by nature. Her boss takes the place of her husband, who she strives to please. and so on.

Long story short, saying you can switch the roles without much consequence basically says the sexes are interchangeable. They are not. Their minds are different. Their temptations are different. Their psychology is different. A woman doesn't experience a full time day at work the same way a man does. Her thoughts are different from the man's all day long -- at work or anywhere else.

And men don't make good mothers either. The inadequacy is real on both sides.

Well said, concise and succinct answers Matthew.

My uncle, although not Catholic, was a stay at home Dad for a very long time after he injured his shoulder working at Delta as a baggage handler. His wife made fat bucks, well into six figures, he basically turned into a manlet after he stopped working. She ran the roost, it was really painful to watch. Needless to say, now that their ONLY child is basically a grown woman (16yrs old), they have divorced. It is pathetic really.

I feel bad for him, but he did exactly what you described. Once he lost his job, he retreated to the man cave and literally played videogames all day and watched movies. He was well into his 40's early 50's at this interval.

I agree.

By the way, YES it's a trend, especially in 2018 with over 60% of college students being female, the current education system which favors (and caters to) the female mind and way of looking at things, etc. Women end up with better school grades, higher educations, and often even more ambition to succeed in a career than many men, who are overgrown boys into sports, video games, etc.

The modern Education system is designed for girls:

There is a reason why girls outperform boys in school. Girls are not smarter, on average, but they have an easier time because the classroom is set up to reward the calm and organized demeanor more natural to them. Boys are more rambunctious; they have more physical energy; they are less able to sit still and less able to focus attentively on one dull task for a prolonged period of time. The typical classroom environment is torture for a boy. It penalizes him for being himself. It penalizes him for being a boy.
 
 As a result, boys get lower grades. Boys are more likely to drop out. Boys are more likely to be expelled. Perhaps worst of all, boys are twice as likely to be diagnosed with ADHD. By high school, 20% of boys — 20% — are diagnosed. Yet we never stop to ask ourselves why boys are more susceptible to this mysterious mental condition. We never stop to consider that perhaps we are not so much diagnosing boys as we are diagnosing boyhood.

If the school system were not predicated on sitting still and memorizing things (and it need not be), there would be no ADHD. We have arbitrarily decided that every child must be the sort of child who thrives in that environment, even if we have to stuff pills in his mouth to force the issue. Girls are not drugged nearly as often because most of them are already the sort of people the school system prefers. The system may not prefer girls, but it does prefer people who have characteristics more common in girls, which is the same thing

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