It must be the season for profiles of the at-home dad trend. Latest in line is the San Jose Mercury News, which does an anecdote-heavy but otherwise nice piece on local at-home dads.

I'm sure you all have the same question: has the author, Michelle Guido, found any definitive stats on whether us at-home dads are on the increase? Will Rebel Dad be forced to send beers to her under his longstanding beer-for-data proposal? The answer, sadly, is "no." The data she cites for the increase comes from Business Week. So my data quest continues, unabated.

One strand that Guido doesn't really pick up on (perhaps because it's hard to find the numbers -- see the preceding paragraph) is the impact of the economy on at-home dad rates. By traditional thinking (see the Census Department's best stab at the issue) a bad economy should mean a boom in at-home dads, and Silicon Valley should be filled with dot-com-dads who had the opportunity to become Rebel Dads handed to them on a pink sheet. Though I imagine it's an unknowable question, I'd love to have some idea on what the past few years has meant for the Bay area parenting mix.