In honor of election day here, I will be linking only to non-U.S. sources in this post. If you expect this blog, like every other, to opine on what the better-than-expected turnout of left-handed orthodontists with one dog, one cat and no kids means for Bush's re-election effort, I suggest you look elsewhere.

But in my alternative universe in which all news pertains to parenthood, there was one heck of an encouraging piece in the Japan Times about at-home fathers. The peg is the surprising success of a new TV show about a stay-at-home father, which sounds remarkably nuanced (it's billed as a drama). And there's apparently a book called "Wisdom of Househusbands" that's about to be published over there. Japan has a longtime stereotype as a work-first country, so this emergent trend suggests that cracks are forming in the male stereotype the world over.

The story isn't breathless about the trend, acknowledging that TV is "a half-step ahead" of the rest of the society. But on the stat front, the best estimate of at-home fatherhood in Japan has doubled since 1996 to more than 80,000. (An aside: on a per capita basis, that's a far, far higher number than the silly U.S. Census estimate for at-home dads.)

Across the other pond in the UK, the Independent runs this story about messing with gender roles at work. The at-home dad's story appears at the bottom. (Another aside: the story says there are 155,000 at-home dads in Britain. That number would put the per capita number of at-home dads over there somewhere around 10 times the "official" U.S. number. Hmmm. Could it be that the "official" U.S. demographers have something wrong?)