After he was laid off from his software engineering job more than four years ago, Baylies and his wife, Susan, an elementary school teacher, decided he would stay home and take care of the couple’s two children rather than send them back to day care. “As more women get into the workplace, receiving higher pay and breaking through the glass ceiling, more men are electing to stay home as they are making less than their wives,” he says.

Through a survey of 368 readers of his newsletter, Baylies cites four main reasons why dads stay home:

1. The couple didn’t want to send their children to day care.
2. The wife made more money.
3. The wife wanted to work more.
4. The husband had a greater desire to stay home.

In these continuing days of corporate downsizing and with the ever-increasing numbers of home-based businesses, many other full-time fathers are telecommuters -- corporate dads who work via the telephone, fax and internet. By day, they cart the kids around to playgroups and art lessons. But once the kids are in bed, either at nap time or nighttime, they shift gears and become entrepreneurs. Regardless of how they get there, though, stay-at-home dads are finally getting attention.