The NYT recently noted that stay-at-home dads are a growing trend:
In the last decade … the number of men who have left the work force entirely to raise children has more than doubled, to 176,000, according to recent United States census data. Expanding that to include men who maintain freelance or part-time jobs but serve as the primary caretaker of children under 15 while their wife works, the number is around 626,000, according to calculations the census bureau compiled for this article.
Philip N. Cohen puts those numbers in perspective:
In fact, when you look at the trend as published by the Census Bureau, you see that the proportion of married couple families in which the father meets the stay-at-home criteria has doubled: from 0.4% in 2000 to 0.8% today. The larger estimate which includes fathers working part-time comes out to 2.8% of married couple families with children under 15. The father who used the phrase “the new normal” in the story was presumably not speaking statistically.
On a related note, we'll be featuring Hanna Rosin on our "Ask Anything" video series in the next month to discuss her new book, The End of Men: And the Rise of Women.
The Dish 