SAHDs Don't Have Uzis. Or Cooties.

I have spent a lot of time -- here, in the media, at the At-Home Dad Convention -- telling people that while at-home dads often feel isolated, it's not a gender thing (at-home moms feel isolated, too). There is no conspiracy to ignore dads on the playground. There is no underground network of mommy playgroups that systematically keeps neighborhood dads away.

But let me now carve out one exception to my there's-no-conspiracy-against-SAHDs stance. If you are an at-home dad and you live in a certain neighborhood of Nashville, a woman named Lindsay Ferrier is more than willing to blackballing you from her playgroup:

I imagined a play group where I no longer felt comfortable ranking the Wiggles on a hotness scale of 1 to 10, or discussing the pros and cons of boob jobs. I felt for this guy, really, I did, but I knew what I had to do.

“Look, it could never work, OK?” I said. “I’m telling you, my play group is full.”

Ferrier tries to make the point that she has respect for these guys, doesn't mind having them over and thinks they have a hard slog of it. She just doesn't want them around her friends. And she also spends some time poking fun at the idea that anyone would ever be seriously bothered by what she wrote. (She blogged on the topic and also posted in the comments to Gaming With Baby's thoughtful take.)

Jeez. I figured that once we all got beyond second or third grade, boy and girls (or men and women) could spend time together without it becoming some sort of Major Social Moment. Apparently, not. Not in Nashville, anyway.