Posted on 04. Mar, 2003 by Brian Reid in General
Thank goodness for Trevor, the Verizon guy who finally got me back up and running, digitally.
Of course, I have a backlog of items, and I’ll have to work from the most recent news, namely this transcript from a Kent, Ohio radio station. Nothing special here, just a nice profile of an at-home dad, hitting the usual topics. It’s worth noting that the at-home dad featured is, like Rebel Dad, a part-time worker. The makes one of the links included with the story especially instructive of how little data we have. The link points to the My Daddy Takes Care of Me Census report from a decade ago. It’s old data, though it does a passable job of classifying Gerry Vall as an at-home dad, definitional task that not every governmental effort succeeds at …
To clear out the queue of stuff that built up over the past week, I’d like to point you to nation’s largest paper. If you get the Wall Street Journal Online, you’ll be able to click this link bringing you to an interesting story from last week titled “New Studies Calculate Cost Of Doing Household Chores.” While there’s plenty of interesting stats in there (if you make more than $10,000, it’s worth it to buy the pre-chopper garlic rather than trying to save a buck and mince it yourself, etc.), the author throws this happy fact in: “Economists say one of the most common miscalculations is “outsourcing” child-care needs to free both parents to contribute to the household income. While plenty of parents choose to stay in the labor force because they enjoy their jobs, others stay because they think they can’t afford not to. Sometimes the math proves otherwise …”
I like that. I like it because a) it’s true, b) it’s being reported and c) it’s being reporting as a fact beyond reproach. No economist has to be called in to defend the idea that taking care of your own kids isn’t always a financially dumb move.
Of course, the couple plucked from obscurity to illustrate the point had a working father and an at-home mother. We can’t win ‘em all.