"The interesting thing is that some of these guys are starting to like it," said D. Charles Williams, and Atlanta-based psychologist and author of the book Forever a Father, Always a Son: Discovering the Difference a Dad Can Make. Many of the out-of-work men he's counseled have said that they enjoy taking care of home so much that their next jobs will allow for more family time.
"They're saying, 'If I don't have any more value to my company than this, then I'm not going to miss out on my kids growing up,' " Williams added.
After being laid off from a marketing director job, Jeff Schad of Columbia has taken over at home while returning to a career as a freelance writer.
FOR THE RECORD - An article in Thursday's editions about Constellation Energy Group's lawsuit misspelled a Baltimore Circuit Court judge's name. It is Stuart R. Berger. The Baltimore Sun regrets the errors.
Between making breakfast, getting his 8-year-old stepdaughter to school and watching Sesame Street with his 2-year-old daughter, he finds time to cultivate clients and sources.
"What is most challenging is the day-to-day management," Schad said. "I have to have time to get so many things done for myself and my career, and then be with the kids and try to engage with them."
Fathers employ their own parenting approach once they take the lead at home, Williams said. They tend to be less permissive of wrongdoing and less patient with their child's excuses than moms, he said, but their ways of setting boundaries while still finding time to be buddies can be very effective.
That is, if the father is willing to accept the new role.
"You're so ingrained in making the most of your career and doing what you can do to better yourself," said Schad. "To stop doing that, and for my wife to be the breadwinner, is a radical change, and I haven't fully embraced it yet."
Some men never embrace it, said Geoffrey Greif, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Social Work who has studied fathers in transitions such as marriage breakups and job loss.
"For a lot of men, it goes so much against their notion of masculinity that it can be difficult to take on that kind of full-time househusband role," said Greif. "The fact that there are now so many men out of work makes it more acceptable now than when the economy flourished.
"But men and women are still largely socialized to believe that men are supposed to make more money and work outside the home and women are to work inside the home."
Adelsberger said that initially he adjusted well to being let go, in part because it had happened before. But once the new year began, he began to worry about how long he would be out of work and says, "I guess mentally something in me was saying that I still have to provide."
