one pill each morning. 24 hours. zero heartburn. i m your momma said dance for her did you wiggle your hand for her sorry sorry as jay z sang, fatherhood can be an amazing thing. but the boundary between fatherhood and motherhood is blurring. and a growing number of dads are opting to stay home with the kids. we are up all nightline with juju chang. reporter: it wasn t long ago
their wife outearns them. jake is an artist. his wife is a tax lawyer. marriages like jake and erica s are still in the minority even though the number of at-home dads have doubled, it s still a small number. less than to 0,0200,000. in a way, they are more manly because they can put their egos aside and do what s necessary to take care of the kids. reporter: juju chang, abc news, new york. absolutely. and to not care about the perceptions and know they re doing the right thing for their families. you go with the big income. if you re making a ton of money and i m doing all right, i ll stay home and watch you know, you take the earning power. and the benefits are definitely there. there s actually a national network of stay-at-home dads. athomedad.org. growing in popularity. can i have a nanny, too? so you can play golf? then i get home an hour before you get home and say, i m
this photo of himself doing his daughter s hair. it went viral. some women swooned but the haters came out, too, with ugly comments. he probably rented those kids. they don t even look like him. or, i would bet anything you re a dead beat. but his simple message was a blog post called i have a dream: that people will view a picture like this and not think it s a big deal. stay-at-home dads have to fight the perception they re mooching off their wife s salary. greg spent 12 years in the navy. now he runs a tight ship at home, looking after four kids. they think i m a bum, i should be out there working. why is my wife working and i m not working? i m like,my working. if it was reversed you wouldn t say your daughter is a bomb. you would say, oh, what a good mother she is. i m a great father. try to respect that if you can. reporter: for a lot of stay-at-home dads, it strictly is a numbers game.
by a wide margin. all right welcome to life with the weddies and the landries. i ll see you tonight. i m ute the door by 7:45 and on my way to work, and that s when dave takes over full time. tired, hungry, and a messy diaper. reporter: professional stay-at-home dads and the working wives. did this take mental adjustment and deriving your worth from something other than your job? yeah, there would be days when i d be at the supermarket amongst all of the other moms shopping, and i m thinking, hmm, i m home, they re home, i should be working, but i m with my kid. what do they think of me? reporter: nearly 40% of married, working women in the u.s. now out-earn their husbands, a trend that s been steadily increasing since the late 1980s. that, despite the fact that women working full time still earn a median wage lower than men. women are on track to become
themselves, to the world, that they can anyone can stay at home with their kids. i think the recession also taught people that your job doesn t define you, and if you do, it will crush you. reporter: does this mean the downfall of men in. it by no means is the downfall of man. it s a real liberation for men in terms of not being trapped by the job that you hate, that you feel like you had to take to support a wife and children. the best part i still get to enjoy being a litigator as well as being a mom. i m really genuinely honored that he has the ability to do this. absolutely. you know, we first spoke to the landrys 18 months ago and we caught up with them. they re doing great. the landrys are owning their own home, so congrats. brett told me he couldn t be happier with their arrangement. as for the weddy family, david weddy is a stay-at-home dad, and they re doing well.