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CNN Sunday Morning

House-Husbanding Could Be Hazardous

Aired April 28, 2002 - 07:56   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.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: You live question and answer.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: I am going to have to start...

PHILLIPS: He is going to be in the Internet finding all the answers.

O'BRIEN: Getting all the answers, yes.

All right. If you are a dad who gave up your job to stay home with the kids, take care of them -- boy, I would love to be that dad.

PHILLIPS: You would? Not always greener.

O'BRIEN: Would you support me?

PHILLIPS: Ha. I am going to talk to Sandy about that. All right. A new study finds that being a house husband could be hazardous to your health. Medical correspondent Rhonda Rowland has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How old is he now?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Almost six months now.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, geez.

RHONDA ROWLAND, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Sean Green left his career as an architect to stay home with his two sons. Wife Regan is an attorney. The idea of Mr. Mom, characterized in the 1980s movie, husbands and wives switching traditional roles.

But don't make the mistake of calling these men Mr. Mom. Sean is a member of the dad to dad play group of Atlanta. And they take their roles very seriously. Lossi Momariano (ph) has a daughter.

LOSSI MOMARIANO (ph): Makes dads feel better because they have a way to talk with other dads.

ROWLAND: Men who choose to exchange business cards for strollers and diaper bags may need that kind of support. Findings from a major heart study show that men who have been stay at home dads for at least 10 years have an 80 percent, that's right, 80 percent greater chance of dying than men who traditionally work outside the home.

ELAINE EAKER, EAKER EPIDEMIOLOGY: This finding about house husbands, as far as we know, has never been examined. And it's really an unanticipated finding.

ROWLAND: Researchers speculate stress may the cause of the group's statistic.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Since we were kids, we were raised to, you know, be the breadwinner, you know, take care of the family, you know, financially and you know, be the macho male guy.

ROWLAND: So you weren't really cultured to think that this is what you were going to be doing?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No boy grows up thinking, you know, some day I want to be...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's not many boys that grow up and are in high school that go out for extra cash and say, "Hey, let's go babysitting."

ROWLAND: Yet, they're all doing it for the same reason. Their wives' incomes are higher.

Was this a hard decision for you guys to make for you to stay home?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The decision was pretty easy to make to me. We knew we wanted to watch our kids.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Regan, we need to talk about that answer.

ROWLAND: So what about Sean's wife, Regan, the high demand, high control attorney? The same study also found women like her are three times more likely to develop heart disease than women who are in low authority jobs. Why? Researchers speculate role reversal may be behind both statistics.

EAKER: That incongruity with what society suspects of you may be deleterious to your health.

ROWLAND: Researchers are not telling couples to go back to traditional roles. For Sean and Regan, it seems to be working.

Rhonda Rowland, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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