There were sacrifices but a lot of the worries I see expressed about work life balance don't really worry me. With the strong connection to the kids, I can feel how they are doing: I have that mother's sense of can I work late tonight or do I need to focus on the people. I feel the parenting skills also have made me more effective at work, both in cutting out useless activities because my time is sacred and in seeing the non-verbal emotional sides of people. The idea of how people can have trouble saying certain important things and how to respond to that happening is essential when dealing with kids and useful when dealing with engineers. So I highly recommend staying at home for men that have the capacity for it. (It is hard and you have to be almost totally self driven; no one will thank or notice what you do).
My father was a two time veteran and purple heart winner who never changed the diapers of any of his own kids, but stayed home to care for his first born grandchild when my brother got divorced and got custody.
My family of origin is really, really big on the idea that kids need a full time caregiver. Not so much on the "it needs to be the mother," which is humorous because my parents' marriage was so very old fashioned for so long that no one would have predicted that grandpa would stay home while grandma kept working.
#yougoguy #fistbump