Gender-Based Flourishing: Where are the Stay-at-Home Dads?

I agree with Amy that Hirshman overlooks the widespread judgment by many stay-at-home moms that the workplace is an unlikely venue for authentic human flourishing.  At the same time, I'd be more than a bit naive to insist that the homefront is a perfect venue in that regard.  If part of human flourishing is the development and exercise of the intellect, a full-time gig of diapers and fairy costumes provides a pretty thin gruel.  (How many of us take the opportunity to converse with grown-ups for granted?) 

It seems, then, that we can't respond to Hirshman by portraying the "opt out" revolution as the fullest realization of women's God-given talents.  There is a significant amount of sacrifice involved in terms of the woman's personal development.  Of course, whenever a parent of young children maintains a full-time career there is a sacrifice of personal development in other areas.  It also helps, I think, to maintain a big-picture view: human flourishing must be seen over the course of a lifetime; the fact that the intellect is not pushed to its capacity during the toddler years does not mean that it remains shelved indefinitely. 

So can we agree with Hirshman that a mother's full and authentic flourishing is compromised, to a certain extent, when she remains home with her children, but disagree with Hirshman in pointing out that the self-giving entailed by full-time motherhood promotes another dimension of her flourishing that is not easily realized on the career track?  If so, is the mother's flourishing brought on by her decision to redirect her professional efforts toward her children's well-being of a different quality or degree than the flourishing of a father that would be brought on by his decision to stay home with the children?  If the father (and his kids) would similarly flourish -- and given our concerns about gender inequity in the job market -- should society be encouraging and/or facilitating a stay-at-home dad revolution?  If not, why not?

Rob    

UPDATE: A reader who has decided to enter law school in the fall confesses to wondering whether her decision will compromise her ability to be an effective wife and mother.  She offers this essay, "The Mystery of 'Fair Love,'" by John F. Crosby.  An excerpt:

John Paul thinks that it is the maternal vocation of woman, whereby she can receive a new human being into herself, that disposes her to see the person in others. He says that men need to learn this sensitivity to persons from women. He thinks that all the regions of human life, including the life of the Church, will be vastly enriched when the 'genius of woman' makes itself much more strongly felt within them. This is why he encourages women to become more present with their femininity in society and in the Church. Of course, in accordance with the whole Catholic tradition, he reminds women that their contributions to society and the Church should not be made at the expense of their vocation to maternity. Yet he brings something new out of this tradition by saying that the maternal vocation should not be lived at the expense of these contributions. He wants Catholic women to be first of all wives and mothers, but then also to be bearers of the 'genius of woman' in the contemporary world.