It's magazine day! In the magazines-commenting-on-magazines department, Reason gets in the last (?) word on last month's slightly silly NYT Magazine cover story on "opting out." (See the Rebel Dad discussion of it here.) Now while Reason has its ideological slant ("Free Minds and Free Markets"), the piece on opting-out seems to follow the RD slant.

"Belkin's biggest omission: men ... ", the author, Cathy Young, writes. " ... in many cases, perhaps, it's not that the women have less power but that the men have less freedom. Society still tends to frown on a man who "opts out"... Yet in a 2000 Harris poll, more than four-fifths of men in their 20s and 30s said that a work schedule which allowed for family time was more important to them than a challenging or high-paying job; only about one-quarter said that having a prestigious job was very important." This marks the second interesting Reason writing on dads this year: this piece from May remains one of the most thought-provoking (if wonky) articles in a long while.

Finally, I've sent an e-mail to the guy running Dad's Magazine to see if I can learn more. We're clearly talking about a small, more or less amatuer effort, but I'm happy to see such endeavors. It's tough territory. DadMag is so dead that it appears its URL has been sold to a porn merchant. And other on-line dad resources tend to be caught up on protecting men in the midst of divorce and paternity suits and unearthing feminist conspiracies. If there's a new publication out there -- no matter how small or local -- that can really celebrate dads, then I have one more reason to celebrate.