"Obviously, the SaHD's are left out of the moms & tots type of activity: "

That certainly hasn't been my experience. Granted, I'm not a permanent stay at home Dad, but I have spent a lot of time as my daughter's primary care person. I am today, for example. And we have quite often gone to play groups and the like. The Early Childhood Centre in Renfrew did have one time a week that was for Mothers only. They also had one that was for Fathers only, until we Dads said we didn't want it that way anymore.

At my church, we have a play group/coffee time every Wednesday, and there are several stay at home dads in that group. If it has ever caused tension historically, there is certainly none of that now.

My husband and I both work part-time and are stay-home parents to our preschoolers part-time. He has always taken them to the same activities that I take them to on my days home, and has always been very welcome at all of them.

We have never experienced the attitudes that you are talking about, and neither have any of our friends. In fact it has been the opposite, the moms at the groups have always been really happy to see the dads that are bringing their kids.

I've had some funny experiences in places like grocery stores, particularly when we were in Renfrew, which is a small town that is mostly extremely (read - painfully) conservative. People at the grocery store would see me, see my daughter, smile, then look around for the mother and get very confused when they couldn't find her. No one ever said anything nasty or anything like that, and I found it kind of amusing :)

Our playgroups (secular and UC) both have several dads. Our UC nursery does also. No problem.

I always wonder, though, why men don't make more resources for themselves. In my community, women here always setting up resources, playgroups, co-operative learning initiatives, etc --guys often join these, which is great, but I am curious about why I have not yet met a guy doing likewise --guy-oriented resources could be very useful. Our larger community has so many full-time, part-time or single dads who could benefit --but it seems silly for yet another woman to coordinate that when a guy is surely just as capable.

I'm at home two weeks out of four. And while I am usually the only guy at parent-tot gatherings, or at the nursery school, I haven't had any grief about it. The only times where I've felt there were some tensions about my being there it wasn't my gender. It was the fact that I'm clergy.

In the church, people have been totally supportive of my choice to be at home part-time. When I took parental leave in '02 there were a couple of older women in the wider community (pop 600) who were grumping about it at the coffee shop. But the church folks just ignored it. The worst that has been said to my face (from a non-church person) was, "Oh, I see you're babysitting today." My answer, "Nope. Just being a Dad."

I wonder if being in a farming-based community affects this. Yes, the women were the child-rearers. But before the need to work off the farm to survive the men were around much of the time. So Mom would get involved with various community groups, and Dad would take the kids out to fix fences. Having a SaHD in town isn't that far to jump, conclusion-wise. With more and more men away working to support the farms, leaving women essentially single-parenting a week or several at a time, rural areas might also welcome the sight of two parents being able to both be around. Maybe that makes up for the role-bending. :)

Andrea Doucet in her new book "Do men mother?' reiterates my complaint, as do all of the SaHD & lone father groups.

We have a funny problem in Canada, whenever a male complaint comes up, almost all Canadians rush about saying 'that isn't true.' Canadians get into feats of the most amazing mental gymnastics in order to not see a male problem. That has been a fault for many years and it really is an atrociously bad habit.

I'm glad that some men have had good experiences. Just be aware that you are in the minority.

As for men starting groups, you must remember that there is no money; all the money must BY LAW go to females. That's what the gender funding regulations are there for. So that is a part of the thing. A far bigger problem is system sexism.

There is an open belief in Canada that a group of men with children is a group of pedophiles. Complaints to the police are common wherever such groups have met.

Also, Murray Strauss (one of the world's top experts on child abuse) stated that women have trouble sharing resources with men: Many of our top feminist scholars now support him in that opinion. A woman started group simply has more trouble accepting men than a men started group has accepting women. This, as Strauss states, is simply a matter of our culture never having bothered to teach our women and girls about misandry.

Nathanson & Young get into this point in their books on Misandry and will be offering solutions in their next book. "Spreading Misandry" & "Legalizing Misandry" are fairly heavy duty theory, but worth the read.

Here's the thing, the number of male primary caregivers has reached 1 in 5 of all primary caregivers. The number is much higher if we count the 50/50 caregivers. Yet, we have done nothing to change the assumption that the female is the primary caregiver. This puts needless stress on children and families.

What can be done about it?

I did this for four years while my wife was at theological college in NZ, and we had a wee daughter (I was the "primary care-giver while she was 2-6). We decided she should have one parent at home and, having decided (as an agnostic) that my wife's line of bullsh was better than mine (I was a journalist on a career path), the happy task fell to me.
It was a really 'odd' thing to be doing in those macho days in NZ though there wasn't this horrendous, numbing paranoia about pedophiles.
And they were the best four years I could imagine, and my daughter (now 26) and I still have a special relationship, a rapport that's cool.
Mind you, she did go off to a Catholic primary school able to sing three verses of 'what shall we do with the drunken sailor' and a few other aberrent behaviours but we had fun: taking 'adventures' (bus and train rides), walking, playing - I wrote a terrible novel in wee bits governed by a four year-old's attention span and, with another guy, ran a vegetable co-op for the College so we could eat free veges. My daughter would often come with me to the early morning auctions and sit on my shoulders - she was so cute the auctioneers used to look after us a bit.
I'd recommend it it to any young dad. You can cook, you can do house-keeping, you can love your kid(s) to bits and take pride in making as nice a home as you can... it can be a real joy and a fun learning curve.

Now... can gay guys do it? That seems to me like a damn fool question. Pedophiles aren't all gays or straits; and they aren't that abundant. To lock men out of kiddy contact comes at a very high social cost. Most guys, aware of the presence of a pedophile on their patch would call the cops, like I would. The idea that they'd get into some kind of conspiracy to abuse kids en masse is an extremely paranoid view.
Kids need love, that's the big no. 1. I've seen a few heterosexual couples where that doesn't happen very well.
Single parents? It's tough but they can do it: what they need is a more supportive society - people who'll help out, give a break sometimes, be there when there's tears, be there when there's joy. Solo mums and das should not be left to their own devices on insufficient resources. You can do the maths.
Can churches help?

Hmmm ... it is interesting to think about the idea of 'mental gymnastics,' here. Obviously the experience of the people who responded was different from jw's, but nobody suggested that your experience was not valid, it just wasn't theirs. I would think that that might be a reason to celebrate.
As for myself I have been at times the primary caregiver with two of my children, both while going to school but arranging classes so that I could be at home during the day while my partner was teaching. I didn't experience the level of suspicion you are talking about, but always got frustrated when people would talk about how nice it was that I was 'baby-sitting.' My kids are now either graduated or in school, (and we are lucky in that they go to the same school that my partner teaches at).
The church that I presently minister with has a long history of 'Moms and Tots' programs, attached to a kindergarten program for 4/5 y.o.'s. These programs ended when Kindergarten was moved into the public school system, (which happened before I arrived here). Recently we started a new program around meditation and movement with children and their parents, and the young woman who is coordinating the program was very intentional about the fact that it was directed at both moms and dads and their children.
Again, I don't doubt jw's experience, but it seems to me that there may be a shift hapenning, and just like the slow pace with which we, as a society are moving towards pay equity, (because the woman's income is OBVIOUSLY supplementing the family's income, not the primary salary for the household), we are also moving towards a recognition that caregivers can be mothers and/or fathers, and no parent is 'baby-sitting' their child(ren).
I appreciated that someone else's child went to school, (although mine didn't attend a Catholic school) singing What Do You Do With a Drunken Sailor. My youngest son started school singing ... 'The doors on the bus go ... Come on baby light my fire,' followed by a big smile and a two fingered peace sign.

The other piece to this is what can the churches do? And like many other areas of our society, the churches should be raising their collective voice to break down the stereotypes, holding up and celebrating the positive movement while challenging us to continue the journey until all men and women are judged by the strength of their character and not the colour of their skin, or their age, creed, income level, gender, sex, sexual orientation, ....

and church-goers might think about offering some time to support more iisolated solo parents in the area...

"As for men starting groups, you must remember that there is no money; all the money must BY LAW go to females."

JW, out of the eight parent/tot groups I am involved in, only one receives funding, and it too is open to both dads and moms.

The seven unfunded groups are hosted by parents (in their homes and in the public library) and by various churches who provide space only.

Totally "equal opportunity" to both women and men.

I dunno...

I'm sure there's a bit of a gyno-centric bias to all this...but, personally, I've never seen it: I've looked after both my kids while my wife (other than Mat leave) worked full time and I've taken them to reading groups, "Mom and Me" type groups and I've never had an issue raised, even though various denominations of Churches have often run these groups in their meeting halls or play-rooms.

The agency that my wife used to work for has recently gone through a complete self evaluation and begun a restructuring to become more Dad friendly. It is true that Moms are the gatekeepers to the children, but with education and necessity Dads are becoming more involved in the raising of their children.

Single parent dads aren't a lot different other than having less money. Been there, done that.

I don't think there is a deliberate feminist conspiracy, mostly because not enough women wield enough real power to make it stick. What we do have is the pendulum swinging madly from one pole to the other. Less than a century ago women weren't even counted as persons under the law, now the law seems to be weighted in their favour. It isn't fair, but then life never is.

I understand that, in many, many cases, the law is the only recourse a lot of women have to getting care and financial support for their children, as well as providing job security in a market that oftens sees kids and child rearing as antithetical to running a good business (despite it often being more money to train a replacement than it is to offer Mat leave at 70% of salary)

However, in many cases, it is now the FATHER who is not the primary breadwinner and yet most laws in determining custody and support favour women, rather than being gender blind and merely looking at who needs the support more.

Men in custody/support proceedings are often given treatment that, were it directed at women or minorities, would have labeled as misogyny or racism...

This commonly held belief is a myth -- go sit in family court someday and then tell me that the laws are in favour of women.

I've spent several hours over the last year in family court waiting for my turn. I'm sure the judge hearing the cases in that courtroom would be quite offended and with, in my opinion, good reason.

The one exception I will grant exists is with respect to infant adoption and I think they should be changed so that, following the birth of a child and once the mother has been given proper counselling (not by an adoption agency) and independent legal counsel who decides to surrender her child for adoption, the proven father, if not shown to be unfit, should be given the option of raising his child before an agency or provincial ministry has any ability to put a child into an adoptive family placement.

These cases are few and far between.

Sorry, but calling it a myth is just evidence that you are less familiar with this than you think...
However< if you want anecdotal evidence as well as commentary from the legal profession on the demostrable anti-male bias, I'll try to scrounge some up for you.

Shall we up the ante? I know I could find legal commentary from lawyers supporting my view point as well as the anecdotal experience above.

I see your evidence and raise you case studies...

LOL

Let's just agree to disagree.....

It would be interesting, for the rest of us at least, to see evidence from both of you. Deep in my mind is the assumption that the court system favours women - that said, I realise that I have no intelligent or logical basis for that assumption. I'd love to see some actual information.