Washington - The day his daughter Olivia was born, as Mark Ruis puts it, was the last day of his career - at least for the foreseeable future.
On that day three years ago, Ruis joined a growing number of men across the United States who are bucking tradition and taking on the title of Mr Mom, or stay-at-home dad.
"I didn't think I had it in me," Ruis, 38, of the eastern state of New Jersey, said. "To be a stay-at-home nurturing parent with patience, to be able to do all the chores, all the organisational stuff, I didn't think I could do it.
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"But lo and behold, when it came down to it, I was able to."
'But lo and behold, when it came down to it, I was able to' According to the US Census Bureau, there are 159 000 stay-at-home fathers currently in the United States, a more than three-fold increase from 1996 when they numbered 49 000.
Researchers and associations that represent these fathers, however, estimate their number to be closer to two million, as the Census Bureau figures do not take into account fathers who work part time or from the home.
And they've come a long way in the quarter-century since the bumbling dads in the 1983 hit Mr Mom starring Michael Keaton. While it may have popularised the term, the film treated the species as an oddity, a stay-at-home dad who is there because he lost his job, struggling to cope with diaper-changing, meal-cooking home multi-tasking handled "easily" by women.
As the number of men who decide to become Mr Mom grows, so has the number of support groups, play groups, blogs and products tailored to their needs, such as outdoor jackets with inside pockets large enough to hold diapers.
There is even an annual convention for stay-at-home dads where they exchange ideas, recipes and tips on child rearing and how best to cope with the initial sense of alienation and loneliness that comes with the job.
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