Boring?
.... Boring?!

I just cooked breakfast for three kids, got them all dressed, packed one off to school with lunch and appropriate papers, fed two dogs and three obnoxious fish, cleaned the dishes and the kitchen, started a load of laundry, put up 150 feet of chicken wire to keep one of the dogs from sneaking out again (it doesn't look fancy, but it should do the job), and pulled up my e-mail. It's now almost noon.

Not boring. Maybe monotonous, sometimes. No, a LOT of times. But I don't think I have ever been bored for the past seven years.

Depression? Yeah. Aggravation? H--- yeah. Headaches from all the screaming from them and me? Yup. Disgusted from all the poop that I have found in places where it shouldn't be? Uh-huh.

I wish I would have seen that show. Methinks she might be a bit lazy with her words. I would bet that she would have said "monotonous" or "tedious" if she would have given it some thought. Or maybe she just needs to go get a job and put the kids in daycare. Just a suggestion.

Here's a question: Did ABC use the word "taboo" or has that just crept into the conversation. It just seems that it is used a lot to catch people's attention when a news story needs a bigger audience.

Now, if you will excuse me, I have to go buy fifteen more feet of chicken wire.

You create your own reality.

I think Mike is on the right track in that last paragraph of his post. The drawbacks like laundry and other "mindless" jobs don't have to be boring and mindless, do they?

I like to listen to music, talk radio or think about some projects I am working on while doing these chores. Keeping the mind busy through these mindless, or boring tasks, for me at least, makes them tolerable and I know I am accomplishing something that needs to get done. My family is depending on me and I know I am making a difference.

And yes, there are rewards too...

I guess I should clarify something here: my notion of someone complaining of boredom is a person sitting on their bum at the kitchen table, twiddling their thumbs and thinking "Wow, there's absolutely nothing for me to do except twiddle my thumbs." From this point of view, there is nothing boring about staying at home and raising a passel of kids.

I guess you could say that I was considering the physical aspects of boredom while mbieweng was lookng at the (lack of) mental stimulation that comes from staying at home.

I agree with him, too. There are only so many conversations on Plato that I can have with my four-year-olds, and then we have to move on to Nietzsche and -- really now -- how long can a four-year-old banter about Nietzsche with a mentally drained SAHD.

Seriously, though, I would also like to point to mbieweng's last paragraph in reference to dealing with the tediousness.

MileHi was also correct about NPR and other similar thought-inspiring avenues. They can be stimulating. However, when I listen to NPR, it really makes me want to stand up on my soapbox and tell the world how to do it right. (I am the only person in the world with all the right answers, of course.) But I just don't have an outlet in which to dole out my recipes for "love" and "world peace." Maybe someone should start a thread for that.

Let me begin my post, Mark, by saying that you are not thinking anything new about becoming a SAHD that hasn't been thought by one of us here at one time or another. Having said that, the thoughts you are having are indeed important. After all, having a child is a life-altering experience!

Obviously, becoming a SAHD is a personal decision as well as a family decision. Therefore, you will have the personal challenges to deal with as well as the family challenges. And yes, they are challenges. Each of us deals with the challenges in different ways, and some of us may find the challenges more challenging than others. From the many posts above, you can already get a sense of at least one of the challenges that you may encounter (i.e. monotony or boredom) and ways to deal with it, so I won't spend any more time here on that.

What I wanted to talk about was the precursory fear that you mention.

I knew nothing about parenthood before becoming a SAHD except for what I read in a few books and what I could glean from the mothers I knew that I truly respected. Though I felt more confident after learning the basics (e.g. this is how you change a diaper, this is how you burp a baby, etc.), I still had no idea what I was going to be in for until that little bundle of joy came along.

Even though everything was so awkward and strangely odd after becoming a father, I quickly realized that what I had learned before the birth really helped me to settle into things during those first few months. There were a number of routine processes, and I had mastered many other routine processes in my life, so why couldn't I master these? What I didn't realize throughout all of these repetitious routines was that I was also becoming a dad in the process -- an honest-to-goodness parent. It just happened, and I didn't see it coming. The fear was just gone.

Something else happened during those first few months: I fell in love with someone more deeply than I ever have in my entire life. For me, that love was what really made me know that I was going to be a good dad. It didn't matter to me whether I did everything "right". I mean, what in the heck was "right" anyways? All I knew was that I was going to love that little guy like crazy and take care of him as best as I could, and everything else would just eventually fall into place.