In May we published a piece from Robin Sherwood, who was about to become a stay-at-home dad. It prompted Ian Blyth, a stay-at-home dad of 12 years, to write to GQ with a raw, hard-hitting account of his experience, revealing how it drove him to alcohol abuse, tested his marriage to breaking point and ended his career as a professional photographer.

I took the decision to stay at home with our first child, Oscar, who is now 12. An absolute model of a boy, raised partly in leafy, affluent Muswell Hill, London, then, following a move, in the carefree countryside of the East Midlands. Our chosen spot was a similarly leafy and affluent village, with very good train links to London. In the beginning, the decision was taken for me to stay at home, as my partner, now wife, owned an advertising agency and had much greater earning power than I did as a struggling freelance photographer.

During her maternity leave, having taken part in the ridiculous prenatal classes alongside Michael McIntyre (who, incidentally, wasn’t remotely funny during any of the classes) and his wife, Kitty, my wife remained in contact with the mothers in the group. Daily coffees ensued, as did the prerequisite picnics in Highgate Wood and the usual crap that new mothers keep themselves busy with. Some in the group would often attend childless, as the nanny was getting the little darling to sleep, allowing them a deserved break from their rigorous routine. So my wife went back to work, I picked up where she left off and this is my experience.

I was and still am a very hands-on father, just as my own father was. Confident and used to being alone with my new son, I found the childcare aspect simple. My wife isn't exactly talented in the kitchen, so early on in our relationship I began cooking for her and have done ever since. To date, in our 14 years together she has cooked for me, I think, five times. I had all the credentials: devoted Dad, dab hand in the kitchen and used to keeping a home, having lived on my own for five years previously.

Looking back, I realise it took a long time for the reality to kick in. I loved spending time with Oscar and got to see all the amazing stuff that dads often miss: first steps, first words, potty training (which I f***ing nailed in two weeks), first bike ride without stabilisers... the list goes on. We paid for a couple of days of childcare, so I could continue working the occasional freelance job. But try as I might I simply couldn't get work. I had one client who needed me to submit on a weekly basis, but commitment was difficult, as my wife very often worked (and drank) late. I was also on call for the two days of nursery that Oscar attended. I can remember on one occasion I was shooting in the middle of a forest in Hertfordshire when the phone rang. "Mr Blyth, your son has chickenpox. You need to come and get him immediately. We can’t get hold of your wife." Make-up, models, assistant and art director, understanding as they were, all had to pack up shop, too. Another time, shooting a short film for Greenpeace, having secured a child-friendly location via an agency, I rocked up, art director in tow as well as child, and was told, "Sorry, no kids under 12 on site." The agency had told me it wouldn’t be a problem, but the location manager was, quite rightly, refusing entry to my infant son. So I went in and shot the footage while the art director babysat my child, reading him Mr Men books and directing the shoot via mobile phone from my car. I didn’t shoot for Greenpeace again.

I made the decision, not consciously, that I had to be 100 per cent committed to my son, as my partner and I needed to both be very good at our chosen roles – as opposed to slightly shit. I tried very hard to throw myself into the role of mum, but I had absolutely nothing in common with the mothers of Muswell Hill. As the lone stay-at-home dad, I wasn't even accepted by them as a novelty. When I met them for coffee, the conversations about intimate women issues I had been promised by my wife were, quite understandably, replaced with questions such as, "What's it like being a stay-at-home dad?" I stopped short of telling them I wanted to hear them talk about their genitals.

Inevitably, Oscar and I holed ourselves up in our gardenless two-bed flat. Highlights involved filming Matchbox car stunts on a mobile then replaying, to much delight, the crashes, and cooking dinner together in our tiny kitchen, with Oscar adept at cutting veg with a very sharp knife from aged two (I’d seen indigenous children from South American tribes who were very skilled with a machete and felt if it was good enough for them...), and making sure it was ready for my wife's return home.

Then we decided to have another child. A house in Muswell Hill was out of our price range and we wanted a garden, so we moved to a small Lincolnshire village with really good rail links, three pubs, a Co-op and one shop that stayed open till 10pm. Oh, and a playground and a very good school.

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When my wife gave birth to our second child, she went back to work in London and reality well and truly kicked in. We kept our flat and rented it to friends, so she could stay there during the week, while I stayed in the countryside, miles from civilisation, with only two small children for company. I spent the day renovating the house as much as possible, until I had to collect the kids from preschool or their grandma's house. At this point the real fun kicked in. Time to cook dinner. With my wife away, and void of adult conversation, I quickly found solace in hard liquor. Brandy, vodka, whisky and, if I hadn’t stocked up the drinks cabinet, Cinzano or Martini. Sometimes starting as early as 4pm, often as late as 6pm, but usually somewhere in between.

Dinner was on, the booze was flowing. I could get the children into bed and get totally wrecked on my own. It was great. Until I woke up in the morning, in a bed void of my wife but full of kids, with a sore head, a very dry mouth and the inevitable feeling of depression, caused mostly by the drink but helped by my isolation and lack of meaningful work.

I was renovating the house on my own. Having been an inept weakling in London, I was now gutting rooms, laying bricks, plastering walls and soldering copper pipes. I rebuilt a f***ing Aga by hand with no instruction. I saved us from thousands of pounds worth of building and tradesmen bills, but the situation between myself and my wife was now getting very tense. She was working away most of the week and very stressed as a result. As well as being tired and stressed, she was torn with guilt about having gone back to work and leaving her children. She was missing out on all of the development that I was, by now, taking for granted.

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I’m often made to feel bad by my wife in a way I’ve never encountered in couples with more traditional roles. It would seem that this is not unique to my relationship. Of the few stay-at-home dads I know, most of their partners unwittingly give them a hard time because they don't have the same earning power. But my wife didn't appreciate that I would have loved to go to work every day.

I had no work, I was trying to run a house on my own, drank heavily and resented everyone around me

My selfishness at this point was compounded by a "grass is greener" mentality. My friends, all media professionals, were successfully riding their careers, with magazine shoots, producing films and doing the things that I had dreamed of doing for years. I felt like I was stuck in the house with the children and increasingly saw myself as a loser. I tried and tried to get work in the area, but too few meetings bore even less fruit and phone calls fell on deaf ears. I had no work, I was trying to run a house on my own, drank heavily and resented everyone around me. Weekends descended into total chaos, as more heavy drinking combined with arguments with my wife. I buried my head in the house renovation.

Due to the stress, my wife realised that she had to stop working and managed to get herself a retainer with several companies. She worked from home on a number of projects and was generally a lot happier. We sold the London flat, went on a massive holiday to the US, Australia and Thailand and she got pregnant with our third child. Like any grown man, I decided the best thing to do was to ignore my problems and hope they went away. They didn’t. We were now a family of five and one extra really did make life a lot harder. Having just got used to a bit of freedom, I now had shit on my hands and sick down my front again. Except this time it wasn’t from drinking. I was working sporadically, earning barely anything and my camera kit quickly become outdated and fault. My days clinging on as a photographer were numbered.

Over the years I've been very lucky. I’ve had my photographs in Vogue, had adverts across most major newspapers and magazines, GQ included, shot billboard ads and celebrity portraits. I’ve designed and sold furniture, been featured on interior design programmes and designed pizza ovens that have been praised and purchased by TV chefs, there's one at River Cottage. But now, try as I might, I can't get meaningful employment in the UK. There are lots of avenues to pursue to get parents back in to work, funded by private companies and local councils, but they're aimed at women. I am a veteran stay-at-home dad and I have learned that stay-at-home dads do not receive the same treatment as stay-at-home mums. Society has not yet evolved to grasp the concept and I have often been scolded by neighbours and friends for being lazy by not working. I've had comments thrown at me such as, "Just get a job." I had my own son ask me why I don’t work like his friends' dads do. It lays bare the divisions that men and women both suffer at work and at home.

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I wish I still had a career and the self-respect that it brings. I do have some options - perhaps working shifts in a warehouse or a pub - but having achieved so much for my family and developed such a huge range of skills it would feel like a kick in the teeth if I wasn't using my brain. Anything beyond that is virtually impossible. I have a gap of more than a decade on my CV and both men and women view my choice of staying at home with disdain. I just don't have the respect that mothers do – whether they stay at home or return to work.

Despite the arguments, the stress and the financial issues my family has faced, I wouldn't change a thing, and I know people would kill to be in my position having spent years with the kids, but there's a lot to consider if you're a man who stays at home with the children. I wish I could tell you more, but every 30 seconds I have a little voice in my ear saying, "Dad, can you pick up my play dough?", "Dad, I’m hungry", "Dad, I need a poo", or just "Dad, Dad, Dad!"

It's shit.

Yours faithfully,

Ian Blyth (stay-at-home loser)

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