One thing we don't get very often in the at-home dad literature is heavy-handed socio-political analyses. So thanks to Jeff Taylor at Reason magazine, the staunch free-marketeers, who hits at an interesting point in the above-linked piece.

Here's the money graf: " Much more interesting than keeping score in the blame and pain game would seem to be the fact that at-home dads represent a challenge to the existing orthodoxies about family life. In fact, maybe it is at-home dads' dual threat to left and right that keeps both sides from much talking to them."

He argues that the lefties are made uncomfortable because the very existance of at-home dads dulls complaints about the "patriarchy." If men are suffering under the yoke of child-rearing, Taylor reasons, it's harder to argue that society is full of knuckle-dragging sexists. I'm not sure that holds a lot of water, but it does make me wonder if that's part of the reason we don't hear more about Rebel Dads. And Taylor says the right wing can't use the kids-are-going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket-because-mom's-at-work line when dad could just as easily provide that at-home stability.

I can't say I agree with everything Taylor -- a Rebel Dad himself -- argues, but it's hard to take serious issue with a guy who concludes with this: "Throwing another possible division of labor into the mix has to be a net good for families even if it doesn't fit into a neat category on the left-right continuum or editorial templates."

Let me repeat that: at-home dadism "has to be a net good for familes." That's our mantra around here. Always glad to have it trumpeted.

And -- let it also be pointed out -- he takes some shots at Newsweek, too.

Finally (click it before the link expires!), there's a nice letter to the editor in the Christian Science Monitor, showing that us dads have a sense of humor and a thick skin ...