The difference is dad

Some opt out of the work force for their kids

By Lynn Taylor Rick, Journal staff | Monday, June 16, 2008

Previous Page

Share

• del.icio.us
• Digg
• NewsVine
• Fark

Print

Email

It’s Tuesday morning and Brett Van Heuveln sits at the kitchen table with his 4-year-old daughter, Chloe, on his lap.

The youngster slumps against her dad’s shoulder, dropping off to sleep, snoring ever so slightly. Van Heuveln presses his cheek to her forehead, noticing that the fever from the night before has returned.

Eleven-year-old Drew reads a book in the living room while 9-year-old Heath keeps close tabs on all adult conversations at the table. Five-year-old Avery sits in the middle of the kitchen table, drawing in an activity book.

When the oven timer dings, Drew gets up to check the rhubarb/strawberry roll his dad has made, wondering aloud just how to tell when phyllo dough is “done.”

It’s an idyllic scene that probably plays out in countless houses throughout Rapid City, but one thing is a slightly different here.

In the Van Heuveln household, it’s mother Terri Van Heuveln who leaves in the morning for her job as a certified nurse anesthetist and Brett who works as a stay-at-home dad.

Nationally, the number of stay-at-home

dads reached 159,000 by the year 2006, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That statistic doesn’t include single fathers or fathers who work part time or care for children older than 15.

Stay-at-home mothers still outnumber dads, with nearly 5.6 million moms opting out of the work force to stay at home. But on this Father’s Day, there are more fathers than ever who have given up the corner office to be the primary caregiver of their children.  

Van Heuveln got his first taste of full-time parenting when he took time off from his college engineering classes to care for the couple’s first child, Drew. When he resumed his classes, the couple stepped into the often-frustrating world of day care. “We didn’t really care that much for it,” he said.  

As their family grew from one to four children, the couple experimented with schedules. For a time, Terri worked part time and Brett full time. Then they both worked part time. For another stretch, they worked alternate full-time schedules to be home with the kids.

It was an exhaustive and complex routine. “When we had Chloe, things were getting a little nutty,” he said.

When the kids started taking music lessons and joining sports teams, the couple decided something had to give. They sat down with the budget and “broke it down.”

Finances and common sense told them that having Van Heuveln stay at home was probably the best situation for them. In 2004, he became a full-time stay-at-home dad.

Van Heuveln smiles at the reaction he gets when he tells people about his current profession. “I get a lot of long pauses from guys,” he said. “Our women friends would say, ‘That’s the greatest thing.’” The men offered up something more along the lines of, ‘More power to you, buddy, but I could never do it,’” he said.

Van Heuveln said he’s long gotten over the feelings that he needs to be working outside the home because of how well the situation works for the family. Because he’s home with the kids and the house, his wife can do her work without worrying. And the kids have the security of knowing that Dad is there for them each day.

“We’ve prioritized the kids, and we’re happy with that,” he said.

“It’s just meant the world to our family to have Brett at home,” said Terri. “He has two degrees, business and engineering degrees … but for our family, he’s chosen to make that sacrifice.”

Matt Brown knew long before he ever had kids that someday he would put aside his law career and stay home with his children.

The husband of physician Joy Falkenburg of Custer, Brown said the couple made the decision when they got married. “We decided that it was important for our family that we had one of the parents stay home and we were blessed with the opportunity.”

The fact that it was her rather than him staying home came down to finances. “She was on a career path that would make more money,” he said. It’s a fact that Brown and Falkenburg recognize is a luxury many people simply don’t have. “Not everybody can do this with the way the economy is,” he said.

Brown left his job at the Pennington County State’s Attorney’s Office in September 2003 when Nancy was born. Now 4-1/2, Nancy has been joined by siblings Ryken, 2, and Lincoln, 1.

His first day on the new job induced plenty of anxiety. “I remember the day my wife went back to work … and the first time that Nancy woke up and I was looking at her and thinking, ‘I’m all by myself … now what do I do,’” he said. “I was scared to death of the responsibility for at least a year.”

Brown also admits that at first, he struggled to adjust to the life without his identity as a lawyer. “In a lot of cases, your job defines who you are to the rest of the world … and it begins to define who you are to yourself,” he said.

To combat those feelings, Brown volunteered in the Custer area, started an archery club and began introducing his children to his passions: hunting and fishing.

“I do a lot of hunting and fishing with my children,” he said. He took Nancy on her first ice fishing expedition when she was just 3 months old. “In April, I’d go turkey hunting and I’d just put her in a backpack,” he said. “I did the things that I would usually do and just made the adjustments.”

Initially, Brown wasn’t sure what reaction he would get from the community when he left his job for full-time parenting, but he’s been pleasantly surprised. “I thought I’d get a lot more comments about why I’m staying home,” he said. “In fact, when my friends heard I was going to do that, most of them were jealous.”

He’s also been pleasantly surprised to find so many other men doing the same thing.

Steve Bernard happens to be one of them.

Bernard and his wife, physician Gail Bernard, moved to Rapid City in 2000 to be close to family and to allow Steve to remain home with their four children. It was an arrangement that made the most sense for the family.

“When I was in medical school, it wasn’t something we’d ever discussed. But after we had our first child, we did the crazy run-around day care schedule,” Gail said. “It was crazy.”

Bernard describes himself as a guy who has done everything from cleaning the corner office to running the corner office. Yet, making the move to stay-at-home dad didn’t faze him.

“It helps to have an ego the size of Texas, which I do. That carries me a long way,” he said.

Bernard said he’s received mostly positive responses from people, and he swears he’s never bothered by raised eyebrows or surprised expressions. “No, it doesn’t bother me. Sometimes I tell them I’m a professional Barbie doll dresser,” he said.  

Bernard said he looks at his stay-at-home dad job just like he would any job. And like any job, he wants to do it well.

Bernard makes sure that his wife has none of the household duties. In the evenings, her only job is to spend time with her kids.   

“I’m pretty spoiled,” Gail said. “When I get home in the evening, Steve will be making dinner, and that’s my time to be with the kids … as a working mom, it relieves a lot of the stress.”

As for what the arrangement will mean for their daughters as they grow up, the Bernards just don’t know yet. Bernard thinks his daughters might be a bit tougher, since he tends to react less dramatically to injuries. “I remain emotionless when a kid goes down until I can assess the damage,” he said. “I had a kid fall down the stairs last week, and I didn’t even get out of the chair.”

They also may end up possessing a more bawdy sense of humor. “I know they laugh a lot more about bodily gas functions than if their mom stayed home with them,” he said.

Gail loves it that her daughters get to spend so much time with their daddy as they grow up and thinks it will positively change the way they relate to men as grown women. “I think it’s great they’ll have a very close relationship with their father. … I think he’s setting a pretty high standard,” she said.

All three stay-at-home dads say they’ve found the job even more fulfilling than they expected, and they don’t have any qualms about the path they’ve chosen.   

“This is a great gig,” Bernard said.  

Brown offers much the same sentiment.

“I wouldn’t trade this job for anything,” he said. “This is the best job in the world. Every day, I get to share with my children the things that I enjoy. I get to hopefully mold them into better citizens. I get to see so many things that I know a lot of fathers never get to see.”

Nine-year-old Heath Van Heuveln remembers the days when both of his parents worked at an office. He remembers Dad leaving early and coming home late. And he’s got some pretty definitive ideas about the current arrangement at his house.  

“I’m happy he’s a stay-at-home dad,” Heath said with a nod.

His stay-at-home dad feels the same way. “I can’t see doing anything else,” Van Heuveln said.

Contact Lynn Taylor Rick at 394-8414 or lynn.taylorrick@rapidcityjournal.com.