I know it's getting late on a Friday night and this post is likely to get lost in the black hole of content that is the weekend, but I have a link so wonderful it must be throw up here sooner rather than later. MSN's Money Central put up this hard-headed examination of the personal finance/career/family planning decision to have an at-home dad. (Thanks to the Yahoo! dads-at-home group for the link.)

Not only is the reasoning laid out crystal clear, I love the tone of happy surprise that the author -- MP Dunleavey -- infuses into the column. It reads as if she sat down, thought through the implications of at-home fatherhood and was shocked at the simple conclusion she was able to reach. "I'm lovin' the idea," she writes. "I just got married and I need more financial options than a) I stay home with the kids or b) we shell out half our salaries for child care."

This fills me with joy, because it suggests the big obstacle that keeps many families from choosing at-home dad-dom is a lack of deep thought. Dunleavey's analysis reinforces what I have long believed: anyone who works out the pluses and minuses of various family care decisions must inevitably come to the conclusion that the dad-at-home lifestyle is far more sensible and viable than most seem to appreciate. Of course, the next step -- getting people to think hard about this -- is the hard one. And I'm open to suggestions on how to get over that hurdle.