Forget the mommy/daddy wars - Yesterday Linda Hirshman has launched this high brow food fight  with Rebel Dad (Brian Reid) at the TPM Cafe. Brian's crime?  He  spent under three years at home with one baby.....Once the second baby came Rebel took his rebellious self right into full time work in public relations, leaving his former lawyer wife with a newborn and a kindergartener.

Although this fight has history,  Hirshman's latest comments lead you to believe he practically abandoned his kids, when in my opinion he ranks pretty high on my involved-father-o-meter.  

After she was done bruising up Brian she spotted Daddy Dialectic's Jeremy Smith on the other end of the playground and started poking him with her stick:  Dialectical Smith didn’t even stay home a year, but lived exactly the life the mommy activists dream of. He posts: “You know, my wife and I tried [both working part time] (she . . . is fortunate to have a unionized part-time teaching job that provides full health care) and I must say that it was extremely difficult to maintain . . . I'm interviewing for jobs. For our family, it might better for one of us to work full-time while the other stays home . . . I'm sort of thinking that maybe it's my wife's turn to stay home.” A few hours later: “Well, for us the issue is resolved: yesterday I accepted a full-time job . . . Poof! I'm no longer a stay at home dad and now it's my wife's turn to stay home -- actually, she's still thinking about whether she wants to go back to work. I hope she doesn't; I want her to have time with the boy.” Poof. I’d hate to be the woman with the desk next to Dialectical Dad, taking family leave while he minds the workplace. 

Geez Linda! Brian and Jeremy have both presented  fair arguments, regarding your basic creed of choice feminism and you have to get into a verbal fist fight.  Now I have been home for the last 14 years, with 2 boys while my wife works as a school teacher... does that make me a better father or am I being more fair to my wife than Brian or Jeramy? Well for my family I am, and for their families yes,  we all have a parent at home, which is the best family balance you can have. 

It's important that when couples decide who's staying home to do diapers,  they make the best choice for them and their kids, not for any social agenda or statistical conclusions that's created. Yes it is taking a long time to achieve the equality that you are reaching for. And if we get there great,  but lets concentrate on getting at least one parent to stay at home first, not which sex stays home.