As I pursued this lifestyle of Equally Shared Parenting and I find myself in all of the domains of being a parent - I take care of the home, I am with the kids frequently, I maintain my career and I'm out there enjoying my life as best I can - I've had many comments from different men along the way. One of the ones which I really like is, "Whatever you do, don't tell my wife." They kind of see it as a unilateral disarmament the battle of the sexes. It's "Why give away so much when we have to negotiate all this work that needs to be done around the house?" Things are going pretty well for me, I'm kind of holding it together, but they don't really see the big picture of that they could really get out of it by working as a team with their partner instead of trying to avoid things, but instead of jumping in with both feet and getting good at it and getting it done. On the other hand, if men hear the balance in my explanation of Equally Shared Parenting, they often look at me with envy. They say, "Oh, that must be nice," when they see me walking out the door from work at noon on some random summer afternoon. They think, 'I'd love to do that too. I wish I could find a way to do that.' It can be frustrating though because occasionally I'll presume that men are judging me as a slacker at work or as somebody who's controlled at home by his wife if I don't have the opportunity to explain what it is that's driving me to live this lifestyle. Friends and family are typically very supportive because they've heard the back story. They've seen me grow up. They've seen the kind of decisions I've made even before getting married and having kids so scaling back at work is no big surprise to them at all and they say, "That's great. Keep going. Do what you got to do." There's no denying that it's going to take some courage for many men to break through a lot of the stereotypes there are around men in the workforce. Many of the men I've interviewed who are happily pursuing this lifestyle are kind of rebels. They believe that they want to break through and do things differently. They don't want to do this 'live by the standard expectations of society.' They're kind of rebels with a cause who believe that they deserve something better than what society's currently offering men.