Quite simply: money. My background is in the F&B industry and the hours are not conducive to having small children. When I was working in bars I would see them about an hour a day. That is partly why I decided to not get back into the bar scene and did restaurants again. Those hours are just as bad. Since my schedule as a manager would change weekly (sometimes more, got into the habit of looking at my schedule daily to see if I worked the next day.) we needed a nanny with flexibility. In restaurants I might open on Monday (arrive at 7am out at 6ish) then close on Tuesday (arrive at 5pm out at 3 or 4 or 5 if I'm doing inventory) then off on Wednesday and open again on Thursday. It's not real easy to find a nanny that was that flexible. Daycare isn't really an option because they close at 6:30 pm. There are some that are 24 hour but the ones in this area I wouldn't leave my child at.
Why doesn't my wife watch the children? She has a career, she's a cop. She absolutely loves it. Her hours are better than mine were (that should tell you something about restaurant manager hours), her department does alternating three and four twelve hour shifts. One week she works 36 hours the next it's 48. Sometimes she has overtime due to paperwork and/or arrests but she still works less time than most restaurant managers. Additionally, if I needed time off I had to request it about a month in advance. She could send a text message to her supervisor and get a response back in about five minutes.
So daycare is out, a nanny is pretty much out and then the kicker. I've been in the F&B industry for 28 years and I'm tired of it. The income I was making was about $100-200 more than we were spending for daycare. That was before taxes or gas for driving. Work a job I despise for basically $100 or spend much more time with my children. Easy answer for us. I actually went to my eldest's father/daughter dance, I couldn't have gotten that day off without all sorts of schedule juggling. I was off on Christmas, I've always worked for companies that were open 365 days of the year, it was fun. I will be off on Mother's Day, hasn't happened in about 20 years. I was even off on Superbowl Sunday, I don't watch football but I didn't have to deal with the drama, that was relaxing.
Money is the cold hard reason about why I'm a stay at home dad, but not being in the industry I started hating is just icing on the cake. And spending more time with my kids is beyond my skill as a writer.
Second day in a row I've written something. I'm very proud of myself.
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