After I had my son, I would see moms at the grocery store opening packages of food that they hadn’t yet paid for and feed the contents to their kids. I knew that this was definitely not going to be me.

My child would have the patience to sit in the cart quietly while I searched the store for what we needed. He would never need to be fed at the store and would certainly NEVER cry.

Yesterday I realized that I was THAT mom. I had the crabby screaming child that was being plied with deli meats and extreme cheese goldfish crackers in order to stop him from jumping out of the cart or complaining incessantly about the length of our shopping trip.

I was that mom that was zooming up and down the aisles trying to remember what we needed quickly so that I could just get home for some piece and quiet. AND

I was that person that childless people look at and think “God! Can that woman not control her child” and there was nothing I could do about it.

The grocery store seems to be the one place that I really want my son to be good at, but he just doesn’t have it in him.

The whole experience starts out so positive, but goes down the tubes SO quickly.

I attribute the bad behavior to the over-stimulation.

There are millions of things everywhere that look like they need to be played with, except your child can’t get to them because they are locked in a cart – 4 feet off the ground! The sad part is that I have no idea how to make this chore go better. I load my pockets with toys, sing silly songs and bring treats to keep him happy.

I sometimes wonder if I should I just admit defeat and know that the grocery store will be a war zone until he’s old enough to drive the cart himself?

Any ideas? Please tell me I’m not alone…

According to the US Census Bureau, there are 159,000 stay-at-home fathers currently in the United States, a more than three-fold increase from 1996 when they numbered 49,000.

Researchers and associations that represent these fathers, however, estimate their number to be closer to two million, as the Census Bureau figures do not take into account fathers who work part time or from the home.

And they’ve come a long way in the quarter-century since the bumbling dads in the 1983 hit “Mr Mom” starring Michael Keaton. While it may have popularized the term, the film treated the species as an oddity, a stay-at-home dad who is there because he lost his job, struggling to cope with diaper-changing, meal-cooking home multi-tasking handled “easily” by women.

As the number of men who decide to become Mr Mom grows, so has the number of support groups, play groups, blogs and products tailored to their needs, such as outdoor jackets with inside pockets large enough to hold diapers.

There is even an annual convention for stay-at-home dads where they exchange ideas, recipes and tips on child rearing and how best to cope with the initial sense of alienation and loneliness that comes with the job.

Experts attribute the increase in the number of men who abandon the briefcase and high-powered business lunch for diaper changing, homework and housework to the fact that many women in the workforce today are earning more than their male partners.

They also say that there is less stigma attached nowadays to a man staying home to take care of his children.

SOURCE