Breadwinner?

I've been the sole provider for our family since we were married.  I've worked very hard so Dani could be a stay-at-home mom.  That's what we discussed when we were engaged and that's what we wanted.  It was mostly because we wanted to champion traditional family values and show, through the way we lived, the benefit of following them.

That was about 8 years ago.

Now I've been working a day job for the better part of a decade.  If social pressures and dogma get their way, then I'm almost done with decade 1 with 3 or 4 more to go.  When it's all over, I get to spends the last few years of my life traveling, serving missions, playing with grandkids, and so forth.

I do believe that we all have to work to be happy and successful in life. But, when it comes to the conventional wisdom of how we need to go about work, I don't buy it.

I don't buy that just having mom accessible to the kids is what's best for them.  Why have we designed our entire society around taking fathers out of the home?

What is wrong with designing a social structure where kids, who are old enough, study and learn right next to dad each day as dad works to provide?  Can't I both provide for my kids' present needs and teach them to provide for their own in doing so?

I realize that doing this would sort-of predetermine what kind of jobs my kids would be good at, and becomes the foundation of a class-based society, but I'm just conceptually sick of this idea that a father is an appendage to their kid's development.  I want more than that, and I just don't know how to fill that role.

For the time being, I'm just content to be my kids' tutor for their school work.