Another stretch of silence comes to an end ... I think the war effort has realy dried up the pool of dad stories. That's perfectly understandable -- I'd rather get the latest war and foreign policy updates than slog through endless features, too.

But the pool isn't gone entirely. The Las Vegas Review-Journal has this piece on split-shift families. Sadly, it's low on stats and facts and heavy on the anecdote, but it's a generally neglected topic, and shift-working Rebel Dads are a big part of our silent corps.

I was at the At-Home Dad National Convention last year and met an at-home dad who brought along his father for the second year. Both were wonderful guys, and I asked the elder dad if he, too, had been an at-home dad. He kind of shrugged and told me that he'd worked the night shift and was around home a lot. As far as I was concerned, that made him a card-carrying Rebel Dad. But I can see why those dads, who play both the worker role and the caretaker role, have a hard time identifying themselves first and foremost as a parent. The culture just doesn't signal that job one is dad.

Heck, even the Census Bureau perpetuates this workers-not-caregivers mythic: last year, the agency told Time Magazine that at-home dadism was skyrocketing. That was the good news. The bad news was that they measured the number of at-home dads by looking at men who were outside of the workforce (i.e. not employed or technically unemployed) for family reasons. In short, shift-working dads and sort-of employed dads (like me!) didn't meet the criteria, which explains why the number was so ludicrously low (I believe they estimated 100,000. Please correct me if I'm wrong).

Part of the reason I'm sure the number is higher? I ran into two Rebel Dads in a 15-minute span at the playground on Thursday. Not bad, I thought to myself. Not bad.