Of all the reasons that people come up with against the idea of a man staying home to do the bulk of the child rearing and the mother being the primary breadwinner, I, the proponent of stay-at-home-dadaism have discovered this family structures main foible, a second child. I can shoot down just about every anti-stay-at-home-dad theory but the fact that the woman bares the children and often physically needs to take time off from work is something that the stay-at-home-dad set-up doesn’t really account for.
Currently I’m two wake-ups away from starting a new job because my wife is taking four months off from work and we don’t have a large enough cash reserve to pay our mortgage, property taxes and other outwardly disseminations of cash.
This leaves our home in disarray, I have set up how our home runs, and now my wife has to adapt to working in the home under my old rules or set up new ones while dealing with an upset 33 month old, an ever hungry two week old and a slightly opened wound from her cesarean section.
All the parental books will tell you that the most important thing for children is consistency; it lets them know that they can depend on you. A new baby, temporary live-in mother-in-law, a cranky mommy and your primary care giver now being gone for 10 hours a day has to be a life rocking recipe for someone not yet three years old, and use to being the center of the universe to numerous people.
GUILT. "It’s my job to take care of my home. I should have planned better for this period of adjustment. We should have saved money or taken a loan so I wouldn’t have to work. A condom would have made the decision to have another child happen on a more manageable time frame. This is going to fuck up all the good parenting I’ve done over the past two years. Is my wife going to be able to handle two kids without the experience of taking care of one full-time…".I’m going to try to take a nap while son #2 sleeps.
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I wouldn't worry too much about Giancarlo's world being too rocked by the changes happening in your household. Massive changes are inevitable just by the addition of Matteo, irregardless of the other factors. While it may take some adjustment by everyone in your household, I think (and do pardon me if this sounds just a tad too cliche) that basically if the child feels loved, cared for and provided for, he'll quickly get over the other ultimately superficial changes going on.
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