Heidi Graw wrote:
> "Mark Sobolewski"  wrote in message
> news:mark_sobolewski-DA5D64.23324318012005{at}news.central.cox.net...
> > In article ,
> > "Heidi Graw"  wrote:
> >
> (snip)
>
> >> Heidi wrote:
> >> Mark, every trend has to have a starting point.  During the 70's
only
> >> about
> >> 1,000 men in Canada were stay at home dads.  Now, there are
77,000.
> >>
> >>
http://www.todaysparent.com/lifeasparent/fatherhood/article.jsp?content=4109&p
> >> age=1
> >>
> >> So, it seems to me women are quite prepared to support their
families,
> >> including hubby.
>
> >Mark wrote:
> > Let's look at other statistics on the page:
> >
> > Percentage of families with kids in which dad is the sole
breadwinner,
> > today: 23; in 1976: 54
> > Number of stay-at-home dads in single-earner families today: an
> > estimated 77,000; moms: 1.2 million
> > Number of stay-at-home dads in 1976: 1,000; moms: three million -
> > Average age of stay-at-home fathers: 42
> > Average age of first-time fathers: just under 27
> >
> > I've extrapolated from 3 million mothers (in 1976, this is probably
> > higher today) with 54% of men being the sole breadwinner of all
> > families at the time to imply a total of 6 million families.
> > If that number is the same today, that would mean 77,000 families
have
> > a stay at home dad or 1.2%.
>
> It's 8,139,700 as per Britannica Yearbook 2003 ... making it .945
%...almost
> one in a hundred families have that stay-at-home dad.

All that work over a lousy .3%?  (Ok, 0.255% :-)  I did that math in my
head
and I think I came pretty close thank you very much. :-)

>  And that's up from
> .02 % using your estimated 6 million during the '70's...about 2 per
> ten-thousand families.  That's a huge leap in 30 years!

Not really.  It's a delta of 0.925% towards an equal ratio of 50%
falling short by 49.055%.

If I told you that a filthy kitchen floor covered by 99.9% dirt
had improved by a factor of 10 times (99%) because an employee
dragged a mop over it for half a minute and then goofed off
for 2 hours, would you be confident about eating off of it in the near
future?
Would you view 0.9% improvement as huge progress?

Not only that, all we have are two data points.  We don't know how
this graph really plays out.  It could be that this 1% delta occurred
in a relatively short time and not a lot happened since then.
I remember a neat lesson by a professor who drew two points
on a graph and asked his students what it meant and one
quickly blurted out a huge growth as you indicated.  So he
drew a circle.  Then he drew a straight line.

What EVIDENCE do you have this growth is exponential rather
than linear or even flattening out?

This figure is also less hopeful, when it comes to predicting
future growth in househusbands, when plotted next to other
metrics: Single mother households have increased (in the states)
by a factor of 400 to 800%.  Almost half of successful women
are childless according to Hewlett.  A delta of 1% from near zero
for househusbands by comparison does not sound as if we
should be investing in stock for companies that cater
to them. :-)

> > As you can see, the average age of stay-at-home dads is FAR higher
> > than the normal population.  This is probably because
> > a very high percentage of these men are retirees and NOT
> > being supported by the women.
>
> Average age 42...  Some may indeed be early retirees, but most would
not.

Do you know what average means?  If we split the number in half and
have some
aged 52 and the rest aged 32 (closer to normal age for men to have
children)
then a close majority of the men ARE early retirees.

This is largely a quibble since this only reduces the grand total of
men
women desire as househusbands from a huge 1% to a mere 0.5%.

> > So yes, 77,000 up from 1,000 is pretty high growth but it's
> > still only a total of 1 percent AT BEST.
>
> I know...but it still translates into one in a hundred, up from two
in ten
> thousand.  That's a significant and noteworthy increase in the number
of men
> willing to stay home to raise the kids..

Only because women from the beginning found such men INCREDIBLY
undesirable to begin with!!!

As I said, this delta only appears so large because we started with so
little
to begin with.  But then again, that doesn't say a lot about women's
desire for such men,  does it? Even 30 years ago, most middle class
women
earned more than working class men and only 0.02% of them were
interested.

> So, in a town of 10,000 families,
> we can expect 100 of those to be Stay-At-Home daddies...enough to
form an
> association and an advocacy group of their own.

Advocacy for what?  If the MILLIONS of single mothers and aging career
women
weren't interested in such men before, how are such men going to change
their minds now?

I'm reminded of these commercials for soyburgers.  When they were
introduced,
their sales skyrocketed too for a few years by several hundred percent
up to a market share of 1%.  For some reason, all the commercials on
the air haven't bumped that share that much away from the fatty,
tasty cow-burgers for sale at a hundred other stores.  There is a
difference
between this analogy and what you're talking about: Most women would
rather eat a soy burger than marry a stay-at-home husband.

> >>Heidi wrote:
> >> Dad-at-home is still pretty much a radical idea.  But, I think it
will
> >> catch
> >> on given *time.*
>
> >Mark wrote:
> > HAHAHAHA!
>
> Let's have another conversation 30 years from now ....  ;-)
>
> Heidi

Yes, the number might be up to 2% by then.

In the meantime, the other metrics are quite worrisome with single
mother households under continuous financial stress and
career women's birthrates dropping faster than a rock.  Which
metric do you think is going to win out?

regards,
Mark Sobolewski


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