Traditionally, the nursing sector has been overwhelmingly populated by females, as even in today’s world of equal opportunity employment, more than 90% of nurses are women. Although only about 9% of nurses are males, that doesn’t mean that there’s anything that disqualifies a dad from becoming a nurse. In fact, any man who is willing to go against the societal stereotype could easily become a highly favorable candidate because hospitals, clinics, and other medical facilities are always looking to hire male nurses in an industry-wide effort to level the undeniable gender inequality that clearly still exists within the profession by any statistical measure. With that said, here are ten reasons why becoming a nurse is actually a great career path for dads:

1. The Ability to Study Online in Your Spare Time

The very phrase “spare time” brings joy to dads who have their hands full between their family and work lives. The idea of working on your education amidst all of that can seem impossible, but online nursing degree programs can be completed from anywhere and at your own pace. You can take the slow approach and work on it 1-3 hours per day, or put in long hours on the weekend to accelerate towards graduation. Plus, once you’ve earned a degree, you can continue to advance your career into other areas of expertise to make yourself eligible for higher-paying nursing jobs. For example, you could work towards becoming a family nurse practitioner to earn a salary of $100k-$150k+ by completing RN to NP programs online.

2. Additional Parenting Skills

Some of the skills and techniques that you’ll learn on your way to becoming a nurse could also come in handy in your role as a dad, as many of the same methodologies that apply to patient care also applying to parenting. All kids face mishaps and injuries from time to time, so having a nurse in the home can always be a benefit for the wellbeing of the family. There aren’t that many jobs that directly improve your parenting skills, but nursing is one of them.

3. Knowledge of First Aid Application

Of course, one of the reasons why nurses are such great parents is because they know how to apply all of the components of a first aid kit. Obviously, such a skill could come in handy during an emergency and in rare scenarios could even mean the difference between life or death; all healthcare professionals are required to learn CPR – a resuscitative technique that can save lives in the event of a near-drowning incident, car accident, or other form of trauma. Likewise, you’ll know the Heimlich maneuver well enough to reliably prevent children from choking, and the list goes on.

4. Stable and Steady Employment

Being able to provide a financially stable and comfortable lifestyle for your children is always going to be one of your top duties as a dad. Becoming a nurse puts you in an ideal position to do that because you’ll never have to worry about finding a job due to the incredibly low unemployment rate in the industry – approximately 98% of qualified nurses are employed.

5. Appealing Salaries

Nursing salaries are typically quite desirable when you consider the relative lack of challenging physical labor involved. As a standard registered nurse (RN), you could start out making anywhere from $47k-$90k, and as you gain experience or advance into other specialties like FNP, that figure can increase to $150k+.

6. The Option to Relocate

The ability to travel and move to other parts of the country or world is always a great advantage for a dad to have because it lets you give your kids a cultured and interesting upbringing. Even if you don’t opt for the nomad-friendly field of travel nursing, you can almost always relocate as any kind of nurse and have a very good chance of finding gainful employment in your new home town.

7. Plenty of Room for Income Improvement

Many careers have very straightforward salary limits and a small amount of job positions that can be pursued after graduation. Nursing, on the other hand, does not have such rigid limitations because there are so many fields that you can expand your skill set into, each with increasingly higher salaries. At the top of the ladder, you’ll find high-paying nursing jobs like Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist (CRNA) which pays up to $240k+ per year.

8. Helping to Alleviate the Nursing Shortage

The healthcare industry not only has a shortage of male nurses, it’s facing a widespread shortage of nurses in general. Thus, dads who become nurses have the chance to help correct the profession’s gender inequality and fill the overall gap that is being left by waves of retiring baby boomers who are leaving thousands of nursing positions open every year.

9. Optimal Job Benefits

Of course, whenever you work for a healthcare facility, you’re going to have access to top-notch benefits like various forms of insurance, vacation days, rewards card programs, and desirable overtime pay rates. Nurses who work for hospitals and clinics often report having better benefits than the perks offered by their previous jobs in other industries.

10. Building Experience in the Medical Field

Finally, pursuing any kind of training or certification in the medical profession is always a wise career path to take because it qualifies you as an eligible job candidate wherever healthcare services are provided. In general, the industry as a whole has one of the lowest industry-wide unemployment rates, so whether you decide to stay a nurse or eventually become a physician, you should always have a great job waiting on you.

A Relatively Quick Educational Path

As an extra consideration in closing, when you compare the 2-year path to graduation that an entry level nursing degree program provides, it becomes a much more appealing option than many other fields that can require anywhere form 4-8 years of education before you can get your first real pay check.