US Census Strikes again

The US Census released today some facts for features on Father's Day for the media to use in their yearly father's day stories. Some of the interesting numbers here.

There are estimated to be 66.3 million fathers in the United States today. (not published yet in the census website).

The description the US Newswire press services used is "Mr Mom", when they reported on the census figures on at-home dads. I won't whine about the term but wasn't that movie over 20 years ago? Anyhow they have pegged the number of us (with kids under 15) at 105,000 and we are caring for 189,000 kids.

Now this is where I get confused..the next item on the press release is a figure of 2 million preschoolers "whose fathers care for them more hours than any other child-care provider while their mothers are at work." mmm now we have 105,000 dads caring for 2 million preschoolers. That averages out to 20 kids per father doesn't it? Now, take a look at the raw numbers where these reports come from (they are from 1999 by the way). I bet you won't last 5 minutes looking at these. Back in 1996 I met Lynne Casper of the Census with the 1993 numbers and she had figures including all dads working or not caring for kids under 15 and came up with nearly 2 million at-home dads. I used the 2 million number in my newsletter and in media interviews. Since then the number has sprouted wings and has been used extensively by the print & TV media. Judging from the new numbers it looks like we lost about 1.8 million at-home dads between 1993 and 1999.

More on this later I am going fishing for striped bass and my friend is waiting.