In the spirit of the hyperbole that prompted my "worst story ever written" headline last month, I am happy to announce (belatedly) that I have found the best story ever written about at-home dads: a piece late last month in the Observer's (UK) magazine titled "Man About the House".

It's a staggeringly long piece, and I don't have the ability to digest it well here, but the author, a guy named Mark Honigsbaum, tracks down all sorts of "fully involved fathers," talks to some big name researchers and pulls all kinds of stats out. The narrative is compelling and the story is so full of new information (perhaps because it was written without a focus on the US) that it'll take me a month to go through all the research/surveys/studies/findings he talks about. It's not focused completely on at-home dads, and that turns out to be a strength.

The upshot is a positive piece about fathers seeking to be better dads than the ones they had. In short, it was a story that gave me a new label to wear with pride: "Fully Involved Father." My only worry is that the fathering trend was overstated. The stat that the story hangs on is that today's fathers spend three hours a day with the kids, up from 15 minutes in the 1970s. I find that turnabout so spectacular that I'll have to double-check it. And I certainly hope -- though I don't expect -- that it checks out.