KITCHEN chores don't scare him. Laundry? He scoffs. Ferrying 5-year-old twins? Doesn't faze him.

Who is this superman? He's the new househusband, a man who takes care of home while his wife takes care of the office.

Candace Matthews, president of Chicago-based Soft Sheen-Carson, her husband, Bruce Matthews, are part of a growing national phenomenon--the new breed of housewife---called by some, the househusband. And they wouldn't trade places for the world.

"I don't care if I had Candace's job," he says. "I wouldn't give it up for anything in the world. This is a treat of a lifetime to be able to do this."

Knowing that home is taken care of frees Matthews to fulfill her many responsibilities as president of a company that is a leader in the $1.1 billion Black hair care industry. "The biggest advantage of this arrangement is that I can go to work with a stress-free mind" she says. "I can go to work and know that the girls are taken care of and the house is taken care of and I never have to worry about it."

When she was first offered Soft Sheen-Carson's presidency in 2001, Matthews and her husband had just adopted 3-year-old twins, Sydney and Simone. Bruce owned his own business in Atlanta--a coffee shop--and a lot was going on in their lives.

"It was one of those things where the opportunity of this job was great, but so were the demands," she says now. When the couple first discussed the possibility of Bruce staying at home and Matthews going to the office, she confesses that her gut reaction was, "What a sacrifice!" It was, however, very important for one of them to stay at home. "At the time we probably didn't realize it, but I can assure you in retrospect, we could not do it if someone was not at home full-time," she says. The job requires constant travel, and she makes at least one trip a week, usually overnight. Her husband eventually sold his Atlanta business and the family settled into suburban Chicago. But if the life of a suburban housewife was a difficult transition for the businessman, he doesn't show it. "He's the most secure man I know," his wife says. "It takes a very, very secure man to be able to do this." He shrugs as if it's no big deal. "I know who I am," he says. "I don't second-guess that I'm a man. This is my contribution to my family, which is a greater contribution than any paycheck can ever give. I'm happy where I am."

Bruce, who meets a number of stay-at-home dads on his daily outings, believes the arrangement will become more common in the future. According to Census data, the number of children living with stay-at-home dads has jumped 70 percent since 1990 to more than 2 million. Dr. Robert Frank, assistant professor of psychology at Oakton Community College in suburban Chicago, is a former stay-at-home dad who has studied stay-at-home dads. Contrary to conventional opinion, he says most men don't become stay-at-home dads because they are laid off or can't find work. It's usually a conscious decision that's made by the couple. "My research found that less than 25 percent of the dads were laid off. Most of them are doing this because they want to do it," he says.

Experts say most men become at-home dads for two reasons--because they don't want a third party raising their children and their wives are making better money than they are at the time.

Well-paid wives have the wage flexibility to support such a phenomenon. Their husbands can stay at home or take less stressful jobs without putting the family finances in jeopardy. That was the case for Amy Ellis-Simon and her husband. She is the first African-American woman managing director in investment banking at Merrill Lynch. She recently told Working Mother magazine that her husband quit his job--he also worked at Merrill Lynch--so he could take a more flexible job in real estate and spend more time with the couple's 3- and 1-year-old.

Matthews says that fathers caring for their children while their wives work will become more common in the future. "African-American women in general are moving up the corporate ladder at probably twice the rate that Black men are," he says. "And when Brothers get over that masculinity idea, a lot of things are going to change." He says that for this arrangement to work, both parties have to respect each other's roles and responsibilities. "It doesn't matter who makes the money, she still has to treat him right," he says. "There's nothing wrong with it as long as no one is throwing it in the other person's face, saying, 'Well, I make the money.' Once you do that to a Brother, that's all she wrote; it's gone, it's done."

The couple advises others considering this plan to keep their relationships rooted in God. Bruce says his friends tell him that he has it made, and they want his job. "But they also think I have all this time to play golf, and I haven't played golf since I had the girls!" he says.

What's the most challenging part for him? "Everything!" he quips. "I don't know how a working mom comes home from work and does all this--I don't know," he says. He used to wonder, he says, what stay-at-home moms did all day--now he knows. He begins his day at 5:30 a.m. and at 6:00 a.m. he gets the girls up. Clothes are laid out the night before and he supervises the brushing of teeth and face-washing and then sends them into mom for hair-combing (the sole chore he hasn't mastered, he says). While the girls are getting their hair combed, he is downstairs making breakfast and lunches. The girls eat breakfast, he gives them their lunches and they are all out the door. After he drops the girls at school he hits the gym and then comes home to more chores before picking the girls up from school and taking them to their many after-school activities. "This is a full-time job," he says. "Keeping the house clean, doing the laundry, shuttling the kids to gymnastics, dance and ice-skating lessons, [swimming lessons in the summer], getting the snacks and making dinner. This is overwhelming."

It helps, Bruce says, that he had an unconventional father who raised him and two siblings. So seeing a man who is handy in the kitchen and good with children was not a new experience for him. "My dad raised three kids by himself," he says. "My father is a great man, and I commend him for everything he did back in the 1960s when it was unheard of for a man to raise his children." As for his cooking skills, Bruce says, "I'm a Louisiana boy and I've always enjoyed cooking" Candace Matthews says her husband is the better traditional cook and she is the better baker. "He's the Southern Sunday dinner cook, but I'm the baker," she says, adding that her late mother is still her inspiration. "My mother never used store-bought desserts. I was raised by a wonderful mother who was extremely nurturing. I want to be like her for my daughters."

A native of New Brighton, Pa., she is the youngest of 18 children of an A.M.E. minister and a homemaker. She is a graduate of Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh with a bachelor of science in metallurgical engineering and administrative and management science as well as an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business. But when she comes home at night to a hot, home-cooked meal waiting children and husband, none of that matters. "I come home from work and dinner is on the table," she says. "We eat as a family, and then I bathe the girls, read them a story and put them to bed. Their "couple time" begins at 8. On weekends, Bruce is "off" because Candace describes that as "mommy's and the girls' time."

Although Candace describes her job as a "dream of a lifetime," and "what I have always wanted," she's still overwhelmed by the fact that her husband did whatever it took for her to fulfill that dream. Prompting many a working mom to pose the age-old question: Any more at home like him?

COPYRIGHT 2003 Johnson Publishing Co.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group