It all started innocently enough, with this article on MSN. Pay close attention, though: the article is asking the question “Is the stay-at-home dad the new status symbol for alpha women?”

To their credit, the author does explore this. Briefly. To add a little extra color to the conversation, I can tell you that more men have lost their jobs because the construction industry, heavily hit by the recession, employed so many men. And it makes perfect sense that women would still have their jobs, because women are, for whatever reason*, still making less than men, so it makes perfect sense to keep lower-paid employees when you’re running through the halls laying off staff.

Before I go any further, let me provide full disclosure: Dad, Interrupted is a work-at-home kind of guy, and so he does the lion’s share of doing parent/teacher conferences, dentist appointments, and the like, while I head off to an office.

But here are some of my comments as I read this treatise from Marie Claire:

– one clinical pharmacist is dining on tarragon chicken salad at lunch, courtesy of her StayAtHomeDad husband. Does this mean that, when *I* was a SAHM, I should have been providing this level of catering? Or that my husband is derelict if he doesn’t pack me off to work with a gourmand-worthy meal? If men are secretly harboring this skill, then why am I making dinner every night when I come home???

– the author was talking about the SAHD, but when she says, “Not only is she the breadwinner with a great job, but she’s also got this highly evolved male person—a feminist, father, and husband who doesn’t care what the gender roles are. It’s really an elevated life-form.” For the hard-driving careerist mother, a husband who’s willing to take up the lion’s share at home is a godsend,” I have to wonder: where is this guy when we’re both working outside the home? Wouldn’t a REALLY evolved man be willing to do what most working women are doing: that lion’s share? Or at least split it?

– we are invited to shed a tear for the poor “professional dad [who] lives a life filled with big existential questions (What is my true worth as a person if I don’t get a paycheck?) and tiny daily indignities, like having to buy presents for his wife with her money.”

Um, welcome to the life that women pretty much had no choice about until the 70’s or so. I didn’t see any big hand-wringing while I was growing up about a woman’s true worth and certainly nothing about the ‘tiny daily indignities.’ I suggest that professional dads figure out their true worth the way women have had to: by not deriving their self-esteem from others’ opinions of them. And I certainly hope that the men bummed about where the spending money is coming from remember this when/if they are back being primary breadwinners and remember that the person who keeps homefires burning is contributing to the family income as certainly as if they were setting fire to a cubicle out in corporate America.

– Last, but certainly not least, I want to give a Gibby (see NCIS for further details) to the physician whose husband takes care of everything pretty well, but not well enough. “Jason, a former teacher, is a wonderful, patient father, ‘but Lucy’s hair is often not properly combed,’ says Michelle. ‘I know he tries, but I don’t think he tightens the ponytail enough.'”

Can you imagine the fallout if a man said about his stay-at-home wife, “I know she tries, but I don’t think she changes the oil in the car well enough”?

And even though the headline asks about status symbols for the working woman, the comment section asks us to debate who is better suited to stay at home with children. And of course, the comments have degenerated into a predictable slapfight about feminists and the bible and ZOMG working mothers who are taking the biggest hit of all.

I could spend the rest of my life howling about this, but I’ll save my last beef for this:

There is no math that will let an outsider know for sure whether I’m working because I need the money or whether I’m just enjoying myself, and quite frankly, I don’t give a rat’s behind what an outsider thinks of my situation. The truth of the matter is this: yes, I’d rather be independently wealthy, or be able to make my living writing. But I have to work, and I’m so lucky that I love what I do, and I’m so glad I don’t have to hang out with most of the people quoted in this article.

*I’ll cover the Paycheck Fairness Act on another day, when we’ve all had a chance to chill out.