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CNN Live Today

Mister Mom

Aired May 10, 2002 - 12:56   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Saturday is Mother's Day, but now we want to break from the traditional mold.

And Kathy Slobogin now on the introduction to a house husband in Fort Myers, Florida.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AD HUDLER, STAY-AT-HOME HUSBAND: Come on. Come on. There you go.

KATHY SLOBOGIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is probably the low point of the day. The cat won't take her medicine.

A. HUDLER: All right, one more time, or it's going to go up the other hole. And I mean it.

SLOBOGIN: But it's all in a day's work for Ad Hudler, house husband. This is a man who may possibly be God's gift to women. He cooks. He cleans.

A. HUDLER: I'm going to wash that with the whites.

SLOBOGIN: He irons. He even landscapes. At his home in Fort Myers, Florida, Hudler does everything a housewife would do and more.

A. HUDLER: I still clean every night, every single night. On my hands and knees, I clean the floor, because a mop doesn't do it.

SLOBOGIN: Hudler became a house husband and stayed home with his infant daughter when his wife, a newspaper publisher, got a promotion. Now Hudler, a former reporter, has written a novel about the inner life of a house husband, not an easy life.

A. HUDLER: There are men that look at me with -- as if I'm a source of amusement. And it's kind of degrading. It is. They think I have nothing to offer and I just go and talk to their wives.

SLOBOGIN (on camera): What do you feel like saying to those men?

A. HUDLER: I just want to slap them and say: "Look at that woman right there. Kiss her feet."

SLOBOGIN (voice-over): It's not just the men. Some of the mothers don't wave to him in the carpool line. Still, he says it's women who are his best friends.

A. HUDLER: Women make better companions. They talk about things that are important. They talk about relationships. They talk about nuance. And they see things. And they talk about people. And men have sports.

SLOBOGIN: Hudler says being a caregiver is the hardest job he's ever done, but he doesn't buy the idea that only women can do this.

(on camera): You don't think there's anything inherent in homemaking that makes men incapable of doing it?

A. HUDLER: No. And I'll tell you what. If they say there is, they're lying. It's just that they don't want to.

CAROL HUDLER, BUSINESSWOMAN: Did you have a good day?

HALEY HUDLER, 11 YEARS OLD: Yes, I did. How about you?

SLOBOGIN (voice-over): Carol Hudler says her career wouldn't be possible without her house husband.

C. HUDLER: I really have the best of both worlds.

SLOBOGIN: Hudler even does a kind of proxy shopping for his busy wife, taking Polaroids of possible purchases for her approval, although he's decorated the house.

C. HUDLER: In fact, he did a much better job than if I were doing it. So, those kinds of things.

SLOBOGIN (on camera): Did you ever resent the fact that your wife could go off and have this great career?

A. HUDLER: I knew my time would come. You have got to remember, too, the other really wonderful thing that I have. I don't carry the stress with me every day of earning the money that keeps the family going. That's a huge deal.

SLOBOGIN: Do you ever wish you were the one at home?

C. HUDLER: You know, I used to a long time ago, but only fleeting wishes. In all honesty, I got to make the choice I wanted to make.

SLOBOGIN (voice-over): Hudler's daughter, Haley, now 11, seems to take it all in stride.

H. HUDLER: I like having a dad at home. It's almost kind of like having another mom.

SLOBOGIN: Hudler says life isn't perfect. He misses adult conversation. He gets tired of picking up panties off the floor. But if he weren't here, he says, he would miss too much.

A. HUDLER: I would not trade it for anything in the world, even on the worst parenting day from hell.

SLOBOGIN: Kathy Slobogin, CNN, Fort Myers, Florida.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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