RebelDad

Posted on 18. Oct, 2004 by Brian Reid in General

The freshest and most official government stats on at-home dads are now out, and — as in years past — they’re pretty much wrong. (Thanks to Half Changed World for finding the numbers in the Census haystack.)

The bad news is that our numbers are down to 98,000 in 2003 from 105,000 in 2002. As Elizabeth points out, this is a statistical non-event. Here is her mathematically positive take:

One way that statisticians deal with this kind of noise is to pool the findings from several years. So I compared the average number of SAHDs for 1994-1996 to the average number for 2001-2003, which suggests a whopping 50.8 percent increase. Just comparing 1994 to 2003 produces a 28.9 percent increase, also quite impressive.

All the past criticisms of this number still apply. Here are the guys it excludes:

* Any dad who has made any money in the previous 52 weeks.

-> Shift workers

-> Part-time or temporary workers

* Any dad who has done the job less than 52 weeks.

* Any dad who has looked for work at all in the previous year.

* Single fathers (the stats look only at married family groups)

* Gay fathers

* Any dad who lies about why he’s out of the labor force (only dads who say they’re caring for family are counted. Embarrassed fathers who give another answer — like part-time schooling — are out)

* unmarried fathers (sorry Ken)

* And (again thanks to HCW for noting this) any dad whose wife was “out of the labor force” for as much as a single week. This could include women who are *on maternity leave*, which cuts out 60 percent of otherwise-meeting-the-definition at-home dads.

So where does that leave the actual number of at-home dads? Way, way higher than 98,000. Just adding in the at-home dads whose wives were at home for a period of time boosts the number to 157,000. But the big problem is that guys like me (and heavyweights like Hogan Hilling, Peter Baylies, Jay Massey, Austin Murphy) aren’t counted because of our limited work situation. How much higher? Who knows? Surveys by private groups tend to come up with a percent of at-home dads in the teen range; the Census figures show it closer to 0.5 percent. All that is safe to say is that the government is severely undercounting at-home dads (and at-home moms).