When Christine Saunders was dating Mark Haskett, a photographer, he told her that someday he'd love to stay home to raise their kids. Christine, a lawyer, thought that was just great. She knew she didn't want to stay home full-time or hire a full-time caregiver. Nine years later, Christine Haskett, 37, is a successful partner at the San Francisco law firm Heller Ehrman, while Mark, also 37, relishes his time at home with their 5-year-old son, Mills, and infant daughter, Nicola. "When my son was born, I fired all my clients and told them, 'I'm a kid photographer now,'" says Mark.

Stay-at-home dads like Mark are no longer the cultural curiosity they were when Michael Keaton kept house for Teri Garr in Mr. Mom back in 1983. Still, today's full-time fathers do remain a distinct minority: There are about 143,000 of them according to the 2006 U.S. census, tiny next to the 11 million stay-at-home moms. But the number of children living with stay-at-home dads has increased 18 percent since 1994. In addition, the salaries of white-collar women continue to rise faster than men's, and the number of women earning more than their husbands has risen as well—the 2003 census reported that at least 25 percent of women in double-income marriages outearned their spouses. For couples who put a high value on life balance, as well as having their children raised by a parent full-time, the stay-at-home dad is an increasingly appealing option.

"These men are social entrepreneurs," says law professor Joan Williams, director of the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California, Hastings, and author of Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What to Do About It. "They are challenging traditional definitions of manliness by throwing over one of the key measures of masculinity: the size of the paycheck. You need a strong and self-confident man who knows his own values to pull this off."

Clueless or Enlightened?
You also need a tolerant man. The solo stroller-pushing dad remains a target for unsolicited advice from people on the street. "People pretty much think you're an idiot," says Mark. "They'd see me and say, 'You need to give this baby some water' or 'Let me show you how to do that.' No one would walk up to a woman and say that—that would be rude."

Stay-at-home dads come to the role in very different ways.


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