Glenn Moulds is a stay-at-home father, he washes the nappies, he buys the mushy apple mix, and he bottle-feeds, while his wife is at work five days a week. Now little Ian is three and Glenn still runs after him everyday, pulling remote controls out of the toddler's teething mouth and taking him to playschool.

After 17 years of marriage Glenn and his wife, Maria, decided to have a baby and like most planned pregnancies the logistical questions surmounted.

"We had a fairly strong belief that one parent should be a primary carer," says Glenn, "we didn't want to give the responsibility to either the grandparents or the nanny. So, it just made sense for financial reasons, and also for long term career ambitions, that my wife stay at her job and I would take over the role of the at-home parent."

Maria kept her job as a solicitor in the city and Glenn closed his home-run business that offered sponsorship advice to athletes. They morphed their St Ives home from a business centre into a child-friendly zone and Glenn was ready to rule the roost.

Their decision went against the social norms and even though more people are talking about dishy daddies minding the kids, they are still a rarity. According to Australian Social Trends, released by the Australian Beaureu of statistics (ABS) last month, just over 3 per cent of men who have a working wife are stay-at-home fathers which is only a slight increase from 1992. The ABS says there is no trend of fathers opting to be the primary carers - Glenn is still the minority by far.

The 46-year-old says his male friends aren't keen to adopt his lifestyle. "They haven't been inspired to follow the lead but everybody has got their own situation."

His most enduring challenge has been the absence of a daily work pattern. While this sounds bliss for most young workers, slogging out 50 hours a week or the sluggish students holding on to the 'uni' lifestyle, Glenn says it is not so rosy three years down the track.

"There is no doubt that when you look after a small child, you don't get the opportunity to exercise your brain like you do in a work situation. The lack of mental stimulation takes some getting use to."

While in the day-to-day grind and monotony of cleaning and cooking, Glenn has also found his most poignant moments. He gets to experience what most full time parents don't and recounts his favourite times as the most simple.

"I get to experience a lot of things that most fathers wouldn't. Not so much special times - like the first walk - but more so the normal things, like kicking soccer balls or watching Ian running around and laughing. I have been able to develop a really strong bond with Ian because of the exposure he has with me. That probably wouldn't happen otherwise."

Glenn thinks that many men don't consider the option because it goes against the status quo.

"Often the father has been in a better position financially, and some men find it difficult to take a step back from their career."

Other reasons why Glenn believes men don't stay at home is because "they may feel uncomfortable about how other people would see them, or, they think being a full-time father is a bit hard to deal with and the mother is better able to raise the child," he theorises.

All the research on children's well-being argues that there should be some caring adults permanently in a child's life, but it matters very little if it is a man or woman.

University of Sydney Sociologist, Professor Raewyn Connell, says men have the capacity to care for children, the elderly and the sick but there are forces acting against it. He thinks that because men in general can command higher wages, the business of childcare has become the business of women and the paid employment is mainly the business for men.

"The dominant idea of masculinity in Australia is that men should be the bread-winner and out there struggling in the world, with a wife at home to look after the kids."

Today, fathers have even less time to spend with their children, ultimately missing out on that extra bonding time Glenn describes. According to the ABS, fathers with children under the age of 15 are spending 43 hours at work, up nearly two hours from 1985.

North Ryde resident, Mark Gordon, has been a stay-at-home father of three children for 10 years. He thinks that he is lucky compared to most fathers because he has the time to experience the things a lot of fathers miss out on. Even though there is the cooking and cleaning, on the flip side, he gets to play with the kids and watch them walk and talk for the first time.

Like Glenn, Mark chose to be a primary carer because his wife was earning more money than him as a public servant and she was more ambitious.

"10 years ago I was a real oddity. Most people were pretty supportive and some were jealous, it was a bit of a trail-blazing thing but it worked out well," the 39-year-old says.

Today, when people ask Mark at social events (as they inevitably do), "So what do you do?" Mark always replies, "I'm a domestic engineer." The role is a big change from studying computer science and working for the Department of Employment but he has adjusted with his sense of humour and masculinity in place.

"I think you have to make a bit of a leap as a man to accept the fact that society sees it as a secondary role and if you are not brave enough to stand behind your wife and let her be the main bread-winner and the focal point of the family, it is hard. If you don't have the mind-set it can difficult."

He hasn't had any negative feelings about his family's role reversal, but there are still people who question him when he goes on outings with the kids. Almost every time, people, especially shop assistants ask, "so you are looking after the kids today Dad?" And Mark replies, "Only for the last 10 years!"

In modern day Australia, time is becoming harder to find for the family, as workers, we are sucked into more over-time and longer working hours than ever before. It is easy to join the dots why we are working more: rent, mortgages, petrol and haircuts aren't what they used to be 20 years ago.

Over half of Australia's dads work overtime regularly, a proportion that has increased from 46 per cent in 1993.

Professor Connell thinks that when there is more equality and justice in the economy, more fathers will take the option of staying at home. There is wide-spread awareness now among men of the value of raising children, but there are still economic and social pressures.

"There are difficulties in the way of realising what more or less men want to do and many people still feel it is an unmanly things to do, which is ridiculous."

Having time to stay at home with the child is not a luxury everybody can afford. When economic pressure is continuing to pinch, alternative family arrangements are becoming a more viable option, even if it is against convention.

Children will receive benefits from having a stay at home parent - no matter if they are male or female. Glenn says the bonus of having a stay-at-home-father is that a child could grow to have a more independent state of mind.

"By having a father at home, my child may look at situations in a different light. We all tend to look at things in a conventional way and perhaps he will look at the world with a more open mind or beyond the status quo."