My dad was fired a lot. A radio disc jockey, he had issues with authority that plagued him his entire life, and his pursuit of ephemeral success put a strain on our family.

My mother was our consistent provider. She rose in the ranks to become one of the most influential women in the radio industry, ultimately serving as president of sales at Entercom, one of the largest radio broadcasting companies in the United States.

Bucking trends and social norms of the ’80s, when I was born my dad opted out of the rat race to pursue at-home endeavors, namely me. For the first year of my life, he raised me as one of those then-mythical stay-at-home dads. At the time, this idea was so groundbreaking that it merited him a feature spot on the local nightly news. Why would a man in his creative prime venture out of the radio studio and into a nursery?

I’ll let him speak for himself.

His early involvement in my life, untethered from a job that would’ve kept him away from us for extended blocks of time each day, made my relationship with him very close. When he passed away, I felt like a little piece of me was carved out and thrown away. His engagement in my development, and his early death when I was 24, changed the way I look at fatherhood and my career path.

Being there put me on a better footing to go after my career with greater ferocity when I returned to the workforce because I had a purpose for achievement.

Fast forward about 30 years. I’m a father now of two boys and the once-linear path of employment our parents had has been replaced by a web of contacts, opportunities, and lateral moves. For modern parents, the stress of unsure working conditions, lack of available paid family leave, intensified and obsessive corporate culture, as well as an unstable job market, underlie my belief that the discussion about “having it all” is entirely moot. While the media and blogosphere have touted this as being “the year of the dad,” we still have a long way to go to understand how fathers and mothers fit into today’s workplace.

I stayed at home with my first son for the first nine months of his life–a choice that, while not meriting local news coverage, is still considered somewhat unconventional. When we balanced all the factors–economics, our schedules, my intense desire to be an engaged father– it was simply the correct decision for us. That early investment has paid huge emotional dividends for me. Being there put me on a better footing to go after my career with greater ferocity when I returned to the workforce because I had a purpose for achievement. Fatherhood became the lens and the subject for me. Writing about fatherhood and tapping into powerful online communities of parents broadened my career opportunities as a digital strategist as well.