Breadwinner moms and stay-at-home dads are still not the standard titles you hear when describing today’s family dynamics, but they are steadily becoming commonplace in our modern-day homes.

Monaica Ledell and Liz O’Donnell are two  successful and confident women that have settled in to their own titles of breadwinner moms.

Ledell, founder of Mommy Breadwinner and TruthHacking, works from home with her husband most days while raising nine-year-old and five-month-old girls.

“If I have the capacity to provide a better life for them, then I better do it,” she says in a phone interview while juggling her very vocal infant daughter.

 O’Donnell, senior vice-president and general manager of Double Forte, as well as author of Mogul, Mom & Maid: The Balancing Act of the Modern Woman, works full-time while her husband effectively runs the roost at home with their son and daughter. She says her plan works because she gets fulfilment from working that her husband doesn’t.

“He has much better domestic skills then I do; I run the whites and the reds and everything comes out pink. He’s the really good cook and I stress over boiling water,” she adds.

Last spring, the Pew Research Centre found that in a record 40 per cent of families, the mother is the primary earner. Though the majority of that figure consists of single mothers, 37 per cent are married and out-earn their husbands.

Ledell says the experience of being the breadwinner in her family was challenging at first. “It caused marital problems for a while until I realized that this is probably the best thing I could do for my family. Whether it be working outside the home or working for myself is irrelevant.”

Ledell feels that, like many adult women today, she was raised to acknowledge that typically the husband earned more than the wife.

“I kind of had this idea in my mind that I was going to marry the brain surgeon and be at home and be a soccer mom and have four or six kids and drive around in a suburban, and that didn’t happen,” she says, adding that she has always worked.

According to O’Donnell, the experience has been something she’s had to adjust to. Like Ledell, her image of a mother was one who was at home in the kitchen taking care of the family. “It was interesting to get used to the fact that I’m not necessarily the first parent that the kids come to when they need comforting,” she says.

As to reasons why women become the breadwinners in their homes, the answers are varied with some choosing the lifestyle and others being forced into it. Ledell says for her it wasn’t a decision. “I came to realize pretty quickly that I am just more driven than my husband … but I also learned that I have a higher earning capacity than he does.”

On the other hand, O’Donnell and her husband were “100 per cent sure” that when they decided to settle down and have kids, she would be the one working while he became a stay-at-home dad.

With the number of these types of parents rising every day, O’Donnell emphasizes the importance of altering “our thinking around traditional gender roles.”  She adds that it needs to become “more acceptable for people to pursue the role that they are best at.”

Photo: Scanrail/Thinkstock