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By Karen Hart
 Steve
Lagasse '81 dropped out of the rat race to be a stay-at-home dad. The
change in his life has
been powerful and enlightening.
"Fortunate. Content. Satisfied."
These
are the words 40-year-old Stephen Lagasse '81 uses to describe
his life. He could have had a rewarding career in a number
of fields. He has been an Air Force officer, a satellite engineer and
a real estate
appraiser. He studied home design and construction at
Maine's Shelter Institute and has lived all over the country. But these days
home is White River Junction, Vt., and his orders come from Sarah and Rachel,
his six-year and eight-year-old daughters. They're his bosses now, and have been
for the past five years.
Lagasse grew up in Lebanon, N.H., the son of Raymond and Maree Lagasse and the
eldest of four children. Like most men of his generation, Ray went off to work
each day (as a public educator) while Maree stayed home. When their youngest
was in school, she went back
to work to help make ends meet. "My parents' priority was making sure the wolf
never got to our door," Steve said. "They grew up during hard times, and they
made sure we always had enough."
Lagasse came to Holy Cross in 1977, in part because his
uncle, James Doherty '51, had such a strong connection with the College.
Steve graduated with a degree in physics. Job offers were scarce, so
in 1982 he joined the Air Force and earned a second degree in electrical
engineering from the University of Mexico. He served four years in New
Jersey helping build military weather satellites, and there met a civilian
mission specialist named Colleen O'Brien. They married in 1986, and,
in 1988, Steve retired from the Air Force as a captain. Instead
of continuing in the field of engineering, he decided to follow his interests
in real
estate and home restoration.
Today at the Lagasses' middle-class Upper Valley home there are no suits, no
ties, no engineering schematics. Instead, when morning comes during the school
year, Steve rouses Sarah and Rachel, makes them breakfast, packs their backpacks,
brushes their hair and walks them to their bus stop. Between the laundry, cooking
and other household errands he refurbishes their old house. Every Wednesday he
spends an hour in class with Rachel and Sarah and then eats lunch with them and
their
classmates in the school's cafeteria. During the school year he takes them to
Brownies, soccer and basketball. Summers drift by with day camp, vacations at
the ocean, swimming lessons and reading. Meanwhile, Colleen heads off to work
each morning as a project manager for Vicinity, an Internet-resource company.
Colleen brings home the paycheck and provides the benefits needed by a family
of four in the 1990s. And when Mom comes home from work, "More often than not,
she gets a more enthusiastic greeting than I remember getting when I was working
full-time," Steve said.
The Lagasses' story is unusual only in that the switch in traditional roles was
simply an extension of their already shared parental responsibilities. Before
Steve became an at-home dad he had already done his share of diaper changes and
caregiving. "Colleen earned
her master's degree at Rivier College in Nashua, so I was home alone with Rachel
and Sarah two evenings a week right from the start," Steve said.
When Rachel was born in 1991, the couple lived in Concord,
N.H. Colleen stayed home with their daughter while Steve
continued working for a real estate appraisal company. They moved to
Lebanon in 1992 and
a year later Sarah came along. But the 60-mile commute to
Concord even four days a week started taking its toll. "I found myself having days
when
I'd leave before the girls woke up and return after they were asleep," Steve
said. "It didn't bother me at first, but I realized pretty quickly
that it wouldn't get any better unless I made a change." So he set up his
own appraisal business and worked out of their home for 18 months. "I loved the
flexibility and seeing so much of Colleen and the girls."
By the fall of 1994 Colleen had been a full-time mom for three years, and money
was getting tight. "She wanted to get back to a professional environment and
we needed the stability that a steady
paycheck could bring," Steve said. "And both of us felt she was more marketable
than I was."
A two-income household that relied on daycare
wasn't appealing, but continuing to have one parent home full time with the girls
was. So when Colleen found a good job, Steve shifted from breadwinner to full-time
parent and didn't look back. "It was an easy and natural transition for me to
start taking care of the girls full time," Steve said. "It wasn't something I
wrestled with at all. I've enjoyed it since day one. Some of my male friends
may have trouble imagining themselves as at-home parents, but I think most men
could get used to it pretty quickly. For me, it boils down to spending every
day with two of my favorite people in the whole world. Seeing so much of Rachel
and Sarah makes me really happy."
There have been some material sacrifices,
Steve said, "but nothing really earth-shaking." He and Colleen realized early
on that in a life with children and only one income, a nice home and new cars
would have to wait. "Like many of our peers, during the first few years of our
marriage we both worked and had no children, so we owned our home and drove nice
cars. With Rachel's arrival we traded in my newer car and its monthly payment
for an older one and moved from a house to a two-bedroom apartment to keep our
expenses manageable. And we could not have done it without finding two mechanics
we trusted-there was a stretch when our cars had a half-million miles between
them, and it seemed like we were down at the garage every week. It has also helped
that neither
one of us has felt particularly compelled to 'keep up with the Joneses.' Don't
misunderstand, we like material possessions, but things don't have to be expensive
to please us."
Nevertheless, not all the changes have
been easy. "I had kind of unconsciously bought into the idea that I was in large
part defined by my occupation and when people asked me that first
year 'what I did,' I'd tell them I was an appraiser, because I was still appraising
part time. It eventually dawned on me that I wasn't going to find a more pleasant
or satisfying job than taking care of Rachel and Sarah,
and it's since become natural to describe myself as 'an at-home dad.'"
Most people are interested and supportive
when they find out I'm at home full time," Steve said, "but every now and then
someone can't stop himself or herself from implying that staying home with children
really isn't suitable 'work' for a man."
At first he felt he had to try and explain
himself to the person, "but I rarely got through, so now if it happens, I just
let it slide-I no longer feel that it's my job to educate them." But the
rough spots are few and far between. His best and worst days? "There
really aren't any bad days," Steve said. He pauses for a moment. "It may sound
trite, but 90 percent of my days are great and the rest are pretty
good. I'm sure that there are hundreds of people within a ten-mile radius who
would gladly trade 'bad days' with me, so I know how fortunate I am to have a
job I truly love. I realize though, that there's no guarantee
that it's going to keep going smoothly, so I tend to wallow in my daughters a
little every day."
The coming year will bring some changes for Steve and his daughters. Sarah is
in first grade and now both girls will be gone for the whole day. Gone are the
Mickey-Mouse-waffle-and-hot-chocolate lunches he shared with Sarah at the local
diner and the one-on-one time
they had before Rachel's bus dropped her off. He is aware that he has a unique
relationship with his children, one that many fathers and daughters are not able
to share. And he knows it will take conscious effort to keep his relationship
with his daughters strong.
"One unsolicited piece of advice I'd offer to a father or mother who's
working and doesn't see their children as much as they'd like is to make
regular one-on-one time with each child," he said. "It's powerful and
enlightening to be alone with your son or daughter. I try to stay regularly
connected with each girl by taking her for a walk or with me to run errands.
She'll usually just start telling me what's on her mind and what's going
on at school. I'll ask her what her favorite part of the day or week
was and what she liked least. We'll stop for a doughnut or an ice cream
cone and just hang out for a while. Both girls also like me coming to
school for lunch, and I'll continue doing that as long as they want me
to. Because I can't predict what Rachel and Sarah are going to remember
about their childhood, I'll continue surrounding them with small pleasures."
Karen Hart is a free-lance journalist from West
Boylston, Mass.
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