S.M.
Way to go SAHD! Good luck!
My husband stays home with our 10 mo. old son and, like any stay-at-home parent, he needs a social outlet as well as more variety in our son's day. He would like to find SAHDs with similar aged kids or a group of moms who don't care what gender the parent is.
We live in the Parkland area. Prior to the birth of our son, my husband was a boat builder. He still enjoys sailing and pretty much any outdoors activity.
Way to go SAHD! Good luck!
Tell your husband to go to www.meetup.com and search for parents groups. He just puts in the topic of interest "parents" or "kids" or "dads" (or he can try all three) and his zip code and it will tell him about groups he can join. There are lots of groups for stay at home moms and dads to have a social outlet and do fun activities with the kids.
I suggest he contact Bernie Dorsey, Founder of Conscious Fathering. They provide classes, etc for expectant dads--however, Bernie was/is a stay at home dad with his son and might have some resources for your husband about SAHD groups in the area. He's a great guy, too--and a sailor!
email is ____@____.com.
website is www.consciousfathering.org
Good luck!
I would suggest attending a parent-child class - often offered by community colleges. You may have to wait until your child is a year or year and a half. In the meantime, try Gymboree or another class - when I was new to the area with a 3 month old, that is how I connected with other parents.
With regard to the parent-child class, I met some other mothers in the class (there were a few fathers that attended as well) and once the class was over, we decided to meet for play groups at parks or someone's house. When our children started school, we still wanted to get together so we decided to meet once a month for dinner with the entire family (simple meals was the rule, we rotated homes). We are still getting together once a month and our eldest kids are 15!
I realize that you never know who will sign up for a parent educ. class so there's not guarentee there will be other fathers, however, I found the classes useful in themselves - interaction and activities for the kids, a parent discussion session on age appropriate topics.
i would love to know if you find anything.
if he doesn't find anything, he could always start a group on meetup.com!
--thanks to AmyJ for the Conscious Fathering link!