Answer that and you'll know why there are no "daddy wars" and only "mommy wars."

We're a lot more forgiving...scrapes, cuts, and to each other.

We are wired differently. Not much, but enough to make it interesting.

Please, lighten up on each other and each other's choices. It will do everyone some good.

When a guy says, "I don't want my babies to be raised by anybody else," chances are he means that, all things being equal, and since he's got the choice, he'd rather stay at home than send his kids to daycare. Period. He doesn't mean, "Working dads are idiots." He doesn't mean, "I'm trying to start a broader sociological discussion by simultaneously praising my decision to stay at home while subtly deriding those who decide otherwise."

Take him at his word. And don't project your insecurities.

-- Working Dad

it means the man has the money and the power. Of course it's very feminist for the man to stay home and leave the money and the power to the woman. Of course a stay at home man is powerless and without influence in a way that a stay at home woman isn't (unless the stay at home wife is the object of no sexual interest by the working(earning) husband).

or Mommy-and-Daddy-Sheet?

I think the last, oh, seven million entries have been about parenting, childbirth, infertility, pregnancy, working mothers, working fathers, disaffected mothers, ad nauseam.

I thought part of feminism was about asserting that a woman was more than just the product of her loins. There are some of us women out here who are--gasp!--not parents and not planning to become parents.

I suppose this is everyone's cue to call me a child-hater. But seriously! Are there no topics we can discuss besides mommies?

It's funny, when I think about all the rhetorical questions posed in this piece, both by the Salon author, and the letter writers, it seems that the ones doing the pilloring and lambasting would be women. Reminds me of a TV segment on UrbanMommy about working moms blasting stay-at-home moms. This is something again entirely within the feminine domain...

I mis-remembered the web site - it was urbanbaby.com discussed on the Today show last week

In part because being a stay at home dad is totally new territory and I don't think there will be pundints all sitting around telling men how or why their choice to stay at home could damage their future savings or financial security. Why? Oh because men don't need to be told what to do, they are totally capable of knowing their own minds and best decisions for their lives and families, while we all know women constantly need to be told how to run their lives becuase they either don't care or can't see all those institutions in life working against them. So we have men and women writing books and articles all about how women have either fucked up society or aren't helping improve it. Mothers working is the symbol for the decline of our moral civilization and mothers at home are throwing up all over feminism and surrending their power to the partiarchy.

Frankly women can't win because everyone likes to tell women what to do, while men, they say shut the fuck up, I'll do what I want.

One day a week, the extent of the article's author's SAHD experience, would hardly qualify him to consider himself to be one. The guys in the article who took care of their kids in lieu of daycare until they got old enough for kindergarten comes closer to qualifying. I dare say they must have gotten a wake-up call to realize what a tough job it is. I always have maintained that a stay-at-home mom (or dad, for that matter) has a much tougher job than the breadwinner.

I had the good fortune to have a job that allowed me to earn my (modest) annual income in five weeks while my kids were young, so I was a SAHD for 47 weeks a year but, contrary to the stories here, I did it with my wife, who stayed home 52 weeks a year. Because we had such a golden opportunity we lived in various countries and home-schooled the kids, the logical choice (not having anything to do with religious affiliation, thank you very much). It was very clear that one person doing the parenting—not to mention the home-schooling—would be extremely difficult, be they mom or dad. What I can say unequivocally is that it was an infinitely rewarding experience for the many years we did it. Often challenging but almost always fun, often hilarious. Now they're grown up and both in college and our relationship is closer than any family I know, we're all the best of friends.

I agree with the idea that guys tend to allow for more bumps and bruises. A doctor who studied the child-rearing practices of cultures all over the world once made the observation: "In every culture, men throw their babies in the air. And in every culture, the women worry about it." Just a gender thing, I think, probably built in.

As for the comment about having someone else raising your kids and how that would have started a ruckus if said about working moms, let's be honest here. If you're working full time and your kids are in daycare and school, somebody else is, to a great extent, raising your kids. Babysitting is one of the functions of school. By the time you get home at the end of the day and you're all tuckered out from work, have to make dinner, then the kids have to do homework or else go to bed early, just how much "quality time" are you getting with your kids? Not nearly as much as the time they're spending with their peers and teachers/caregivers during the day. Time spent watching TV together doesn't count. Hey, if you want to raise your kids, then a choice has to be made, and it'll involve sacrifices. Otherwise don't kid yourself, somebody else is, indeed, doing it.