I quit my 6-figure job to be a stay-at-home dad. After leaving California, we could afford to be a single-income family.
Michael Johnston told B-17 he saw work as a means to an end, while his wife was excited to return to her job.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Michael Johnston, 41, a stay-at-home dad who lives in Old Orchard Beach, Maine. Johnston’s financial claims have been verified with documents. It has been edited for length and clarity.
I graduated from Boston University in 2006 with a degree in mechanical engineering. I then got a job in the semiconductor industry. The role allowed me unlimited creative freedom and had crazy big budgets. Life was good.
A few years into this amazing job, things shifted. The 2008 recession hit, and though I survived layoffs, everything changed. Money dried up for creative projects, and suddenly, I was doing paperwork all day.
After my wife Maddie finished school, we wanted a fresh start. We moved coasts onto a ranch in California. I found a new role at KLA Corporation, in manufacturing, with much less paperwork.
When my wife told me she was pregnant, I had a steady job with a manageable workload, but I traveled frequently to China, Taiwan, and South Korea. I was grateful for the income when our son Lincoln was born.
Michael Johnston worked long hours during the pandemic during his first born’s youngest years.
The impossible task of pandemic parenting
Like many parents, March 2020 was a very difficult period for my family of three. Lincoln was around three years old, and suddenly my world narrowed to just four walls during lockdown.
Instead of traveling and working in the office, my role was being permanently on the phone. I had meetings the entire day and would try to get my actual work done in the evening. Calls from around the world pushed late into the night. At some points, I worked almost 24 hours a day.
Maddie, Lincoln, and I tried to maintain daily family life while we kept up with our careers. Now we were both fully remote, so we bought a beach house in Maine in 2020 and left California in 2021. But that wasn’t the only reason we were moving back closer to home: our second baby was on the way.
Johnston fell in love with being a full-time dad.
Crunching numbers on paternity leave
I fully intended to go back to work after paternity leave. I was making six figures doing work that I loved — prior to the pandemic shift — and my team was great.
But over 12 weeks of leave, I fell in love with being a full-time dad. If I was up at 3 a.m. I was comforting a sleepless kid, not fielding international calls. It was some of the best times we’d had as a family.
My wife has a successful career in editorial work, and we began examining whether we could afford to be a one-salary family.
We’d spent our early career days digging out of student and credit card debt from moving around. Right before kids, we’d finally paid off our debt, which was tough even with two incomes.
Moving back to Maine was a major savings opportunity. We streamlined our spending on our mortgage, rental property, two cars, and everything else it takes to run a family in California. We no longer had to pay for flights back, preschool or daycare.
We dug into what life would look like on one income, and my financial projections showed it was doable in Maine.
We walk the kids to school and don’t have a car or a pricey commute. We no longer pay for any day care — a drastic change from the insanely California options at around $2,000 for one child. Maine also has free breakfast and lunch at school.
Deciding who should stay home
Another difficult conversation was about which of us would stay home.
It came down to how we viewed our work. After maternity leave, my wife was excited to see her coworkers and jump back into her job. I saw work as a means to an end. My future wasn’t ever really tied up in my workplace.
I’d missed so much of my first child’s youngest years that I was determined not to repeat that with my second. On the work front, I’d used my degree for 17 years and accomplished what I wanted to.
A week or two before the end of my leave, I set my team up for success and gave my boss my two weeks’ notice.
Michael Johnston saw work as a means to an end and chose to stay home with the kids.
Settling into full-time dad life
The first few months were awesome. We knew we’d made the right choice. I walked the kids to school every day and got to experience small moments I’d previously been too busy to enjoy.
I did have misconceptions about stay-at-home parenting life. I thought I’d renovate our 1954 Airstream during naps. Instead, I get up at 5:30 a.m., make lunches, have a cup of coffee for 15 minutes in peace, and then get everyone ready for school.
Once my oldest is at school, my new mission is potty training. I’m lucky to grab a shower during naptime. I clean and reset the house for the evening, getting dishes under control and dinner started.
My wife and I always split the cores, her taking the mental labor of organizing school and social life comms and I did more physical chores. This is now just more official – I manage school runs and all the household tasks.
When others find out I’m a stay-at-home dad, they always ask: “When are you going back to work?”
Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. If I do, I’ll have different boundaries. I spent too long wrapped up in my job.
We are trained to graduate, get a good job, work that job forever, then retire at 65. I plowed along for long enough. Now I know a corporate job isn’t a mandatory trajectory. It was a choice. I’m happy doing something different.
