When my father and his first wife divorced in the late 1950s, he tookcustody of their three young children and raised them on his own. Back then,that was virtually unheard of. Today, it is merely unusual.

In 1960 only about 1% of children in the U.S. lived with a single dad, andonly a small fraction of those fathers were divorced. Most were widowed, ormarried but with an absent wife. In 2003, about 4.5% of American kids livedwith a single dad, and the majority of the dads were divorced.

"The fastest growing parenting demographic is single dads," saysRoland Warren, president of the National Fatherhood Initiative. Between 1993and 2003, the number of children living with single fathers grew by 33%.

More fathers, the numbers show, are willing to not only provide for theirkids financially, but they're also willing to fill many other roles. As a childfrom my father's second, much later marriage, I never understood why somepeople thought dads were supposed to be so inept at things besides carrying abriefcase. My dad seemed perfectly at ease whether he was quartering a chicken,making a bed, or reading me a story. He'd had some practice.

It's not just single dads, either. "There's a broader culturalacceptance of the role of the nurturing father," Warren tells WebMD. Moremen appear to be staying at home to take care of kids, and dads who go to workare determined not to let their jobs make them strangers to their children.

All-Day Dads

In 1992, Peter Baylies was working for the now-defunct computer companyDigital Equipment Corp., near Boston. The company had been cutting workers bythe thousands, and Baylies suspected he might lose his job in the next round oflayoffs. He and his wife, Sue, a fourth grade teacher, agreed that if he did,he would stay home with their baby boy. The pink slip came, and he took a newposition as primary caregiver to 6-month-old John, and then another son, David,three years later.

"I'm glad I did it," Baylies tells WebMD. But at first, he says itfelt strange to be home alone with a baby all day. "It's a major lifechange," he says. He looked to connect with other dads in his position,using his technical savvy and a new-fangled thing called the Internet. He foundthem, and started a newsletter.

After doing this for several years, "I found myself running the samearticles over and over," he says. "Once the dads' kids were in firstgrade, most of them ended up going back to work, then I would have a whole newgroup of subscribers, and they wanted to know the same information."

Last year, he compiled a decade's worth of advice from his newsletter in abook, The Stay-at-Home Dad Handbook.

How many dads stay at home with their kids? Is it a tiny niche, or a growingtrend? It's hard to say for certain. In 2003, the census counted 98,000 dadswith working wives who stayed home explicitly "to care for home andfamily." That is not a lot, but many men who fit the commonsensedescription of an at-home dad were not counted among that number.