I thought I was through with the sudden mom-and-mom-only approach at Parenting Magazine, having pledged to "just let go" on Tuesday. But then I was reading last month's issue of InStyle (the only thing in the bathroom, I must confess), when I stumbled onto an ad that pictured female legs in a shoe store with this printed in large type: "Where Moms get therapy." The ad continued: "So many shoes, so little time. So, an afternoon spent trying on everything in her size ... sometimes, that's exactly what a Mom needs to get her head in a better place." And then this: "We get Moms." And then there was a photo of the cover from the first "redesigned" Parenting (the one that send me into such a tizzy a couple of months ago).

Does Parenting "get Dads?" I guess not.

Leaving aside the bizarre decision to play off of the moms-as-shoe-crazy-shopaholic stereotype, that ad pretty much confirms everything I feared about who the mag is playing to. They "get moms." Especially InStyle-reading moms. Here's a question: Parenting and InStyle are both Time Inc. mags. Does anyone know of Parenting ads in men-centric Time Inc. pubs (Sports Illustrated, etc.)? Or have we been written out of the script completely.

But we should rejoice, for across the pond, a full third of dads-to-be would like to do the at-home thing, according to a Pregnancy and Birth magazine study discussed in this Independent article (and a bunch of other UK publications). This lines up with the careerbuilder.com study that came out last month, suggesting that there exists a relatively stable group of men who would love to give the Rebel Dad lifestyle a try. I'm sure there are tons of reasons why survey findings of 30 percent or 40 percent may be overstating interest, but the consistancy between studies is encouraging. So there's the challenge: how do we flip those guys from the "thinking-about-it" stage to the "doing-it" stage. All suggestions will be entertained.