The short answer is housework and possibly even sex.

The long answer is from a new world-wide study published in the Journal of Family Issues which finds "married men do less housework then cohabitating men."  [live-in boyfriends]   Their "key finding" stated:

Couples with an egalitarian view on gender—seeing men and women as equal—are more likely to divide the household chores equally. However, in married relationships, even if an egalitarian viewpoint is present, men still report doing less housework than their wives.

In reading thoughout George Mason University's 27 page research paper there was nothing on at-home dad's division of labor except for this gem...

[This] leads to the question whether the relative-resources perspective—that places financial contributions in an exchange relationship with household hours—is in itself gendered. 

I didn't understand the last sentence either, luckily they knew we wouldnt either and translated to:

Are men more likely to see money as a way to “buy out” of housework, and women more likely to view money as power within the relationship that is not as directly tied to hours of housework?  

Reading this, I suddenly remembered a free-wheeling discussion on sex and the at-home dad headed by Brian Reid of Rebel Dad during the At-Home Dad Convention a few years back. During the discussion one mom sitting among the dads suddenly jumped up and said, "when my husband cleans up the house, and has that supper ready for her on the table that's all I need... I am ready for sex".  

Judging from the several other dads who nodded in silent agreement that day I think a better topic could be Effects of Union Type on Division of Household Labor and Sex.

Parenting Magazine accepted this book excerpt as fit to print in their next (Sept) issue. It's from Not that You Asked by Steve Almond. If the title below was say, 6 ways this new mom killed her baby daughter, would they have still approved it?  Is it me?  Or is this really a cute dad piece?  I've already handed this off to the  proper authorities.

                  -- and --

    (and so on with Death 5 and 6)

Gotta love this: Here's the Miss Manners column syndicated in today's papers.  

Seems that this at home dad is tired of having his wife call him at work. 

 "Calls intrude on Mr. Mom's job"

I am a stay-at-home dad, and my wife calls often during the day. I love her dearly, and don't mind hearing that she loves me, but I hear about her day and problems. And while I am busy with our 3-year-old, holding the phone on my shoulder, I hear her typing something on her end.

I really feel insulted and upset. Is it poor manners to keep someone on the phone while you keep working?

I finally had to hang up on her yesterday when she called and kept me on the phone while I was trying to play baseball with our son in the yard, and she wasn't constantly talking, just coming up with spurts of what came to her as she Googled something.

She does ask about my day, but sometimes it seems an excuse, especially since she knows my schedule and calls at least twice a day.

 She wants to talk. It is just not easy to talk and care for a child, or play with him. She knows this intellectually. What can I do?

Miss Manners: Gentle Reader: What a nice reversal this is of "Honey, don't call me at the office."

Well, maybe not so nice, now that Miss Manners thinks about it. It sticks you with that insulting assumption that domestic work, including child rearing, is so unimportant as to be easily interrupted. And your wife clearly needs a more challenging job.

Ask her to e-mail you instead. And during the transition period, apologize that you didn't answer the telephone because you left it indoors when you were out playing baseball, can't hear it when you're running

Hogan Hilling, following up his past book "The Man Who Would be Dad" is now offering us "The Modern Moms Guide to Dads". During his "proud dads" program in California the moms were "confused by their husbands' behavior"   With this book due out in September he clears up the mysteries with "Ten Secrets Your Husband Won't Tell You". 

For those who haven't seem Hogan "perform" here's a profile on him from a 2000 At-Home Dad newsletter. Ill post a review when I can get a hold of a copy.   preorder

What started out as a small burgers and beer get together for a local Northern Illinois dad  turned has into a 5 state hoopla.  It seems that  Todd Krater's (the man behind the  amanamongmommies blog)  original plans spiraled out of control when he discussed his house party idea with his friends. One dad suggested he call it "Dadstock", another photoshopped the poster at left and suddenly he's got dads from 5 surrounding states (as far away as Massachusetts) promising to show up.  So if you are looking for  "a couple hours of piece and quiet" drop by Todds house on  June 30th, 2007. So far  no word if Neil Young will be showing up yet. details

I started digging into several boxes of  archives and began sorting and putting all my old At-Home Dad newsletters into .pdf format.

Here's the first (Spring 1994) issue, to start off the at-home dad archives. Since I only had a few subscribers for the first issue I sent 1200 copies of this issue to the media for free publicity.. The first to respond? Womens's Day!! (below), I offered a free issue and ended up stuffing envelopes for 2 weeks.....

 I don't like to post requests for media, and I've been swamped with them for Fathers day, but this is an exception. Marilyn Gardner was the first reporter to report on my newsletter back around 1996 and has followed up several times with well researched articles on at-home dads.. She's now looking to interview dads who are trying or have succeeded to get  back into the workplace after staying home with the kids for an extended time.. If you fit the bill, you can e-mail her at gardnerm@csmonitor.com

Growing Pains: Almost 10 years to the day after it started, Jay Massey has decided to take Slowlane off it's servers effective today and merge some of its content over to this site.  Before I get into details, here's a little history first.

 In April of 1991 Chris Stafford started the first hardcopy at-home dad newsletter Full Time Dads  out of his Brighton Minnesota home. (Stafford passed that project on to Steve Harris of Maine in 1993. more info.)  In 1997 Stafford started Slowlane.com, but still itchy to move along he passed it on to his friend Jay by the end of the year. 

 Jay used the resources and finances from his own company, Coco Design Associates and just stuffed the site with playgroups, articles,  book reviews, media stories and a forum. With the help of Joe Martin, Coco's co-owner (also an at-home dad) he quickly made it the online resource for at-home dads and expanded the site to a whopping 1200 pages and was getting over 2 million hits a year. In the years the site has been active Jay's has always said "its all about the dads" as he has generously offered his site to help others, whether it was  to help promote and host playgroups,  various author's or just a place for dads to show off their writing. (1n 1997 when Jay took over,  blogger was still 2 years away from inception)  Jay was also a fixture at the At-Home Dad Conventions (he was the only guy wearing sandals) and always offered his web expertise to anyone who approached him. At the second At-home dad convention Jay talked me into securing the athomedad domain name  before it was scooped up. Of course my initial pathetic attempt was no match to Slowlane.

Why these changes to Slowlane now? In the past several years it's 1200 pages became too much to manage, the message board became bogged down with spam and many of the playgroup links became obsolete. At the same time, Jay's son Tucker, and Coco design went though their own growing pains and something had to give. Even a few bloggers took exception of the slowdown.  I asked Jay about the slowdown of his site last week and some of the comments that were circulating.  "I don't blame them, I'd have said the same thing". He agreed that after 10 years Slowlane had served its purpose to give at-home dads a resource,  and it was time to move on.

(Jay at right with his crew and his new stomping ground) 

The only changes I have made so far were for the remaining playgroups that still relied on Slowlane for hosting. I have moved them to my servers and Jay has already re-directed these Slowlane links to mine so there will be no disruption. In the coming months, I will sifting through Slowlane's  pages and will move any relevant content to an archive section. Some of the archives will include past articles, and even articles from the At-Home Dad newsletter from the 90's.

I will keep you posted when I get the archive section up.  In addition, Jay will still be an important part of the at-home dad community as he has offered the resources of  coco design to help with any new ideas and changes that may help. So in the future I'll let you know if and of  at home dad pages are  "powered by Slowlane".  So here's to you Jay, a huge thanks for your past and future contributions to the at-home dad community and for being a good friend on the way.