RebelDad

600,000 At-Home Dads in the UK

Posted on 21. Apr, 2010 by Brian Reid in at-home dads, stats

The big news from across the pond this week is the estimate (by insurance company Aviva) that there are 600,000 at-home dads in the UK - 6 percent of all households with kids under 16. The number comes from a survey of just over 1,000 parents, which makes it as good as any other number.

These stats are always tricky because methodologies differ. In the time I’ve been writing the blog, this is the third number I’ve seen on at-home dads in the UK. In 2004, I pointed to two different newspaper articles (which I can’t find), one of which pegged the number at 155,000 dads. Another suggested it was 11 percent of dads. (Actually, the Aviva survey adds in a fourth number, claiming that a decade ago, only 60,000 at-home dads roamed the UK. But that number is based on government employment data, and if that data is anything like the data in the United States, it massively undercounts at-home fathers.)

At the end of the day, it really doesn’t matter what the exact number is. There is no dispute that the number of dads involved with their kids is on the rise, in the UK, in the United States and pretty much every other place I’ve seen data on. Anyone who has been by a playground on a Tuesday morning can attest to that. But I still like the idea that the news media cover this, because it leads to the idea that at-home fatherhood is mainstream (or closer to mainstream) and that — in turn — gives dads one less excuse for not trying it out.