A few weeks ago Mike Becker, a full-time father from Elkhorn, Nebraska, was at the zoo with his family. Stopping by the elephant house, his four-year-old daughter pointed at the largest of the beasts.

“Mummy, why is that one the biggest?” she asked. “Oh, that’s the mummy elephant,” replied her mother. The child snorted at her mother’s ignorance.

“No,” she said, patiently, “The mummy’s out at work. That’s the daddy elephant.”

The world is changing. The pay gap has shrunk and a new generation of women has absorbed traditional male roles. Men, meanwhile, are taking on more and more childcare. In Britain, according to the Office of National Statistics, there are now 196,000 fathers taking care of babies, a 20 per cent rise since 1997. In America it’s estimated there are 2.5 million men playing with Barbie and mashing bananas. And yet we still think of full-time fathers as somehow suspect; it’s just not, well, manly.

In Kansas City, however, 49 men beg to differ. They have come for the 11th Annual At-Home Dads Convention, a weekend of bonding, bitching and barbecue where men are men and lumberjack shirts are de rigueur.

In fact, entering the ‘meet and greet’ ice-breaker at the city’s Boulevard Brewery the night before the convention, you’d be forgiven for thinking this was a gathering of retired Hell’s Angels. The welcoming committee, Dayv Glusing and Dave Lux, both look like Metallica roadies: shaved heads, goatee beards and prop-forward physiques. There’s not the slightest whiff of the tofu-eating new man about these guys. I gave up a career in magazine publishing to look after my newborn son Finlay a year ago and I’m curious to see how I compare to these men.

It’s 8 am on a wintry Saturday. The University of Missouri-Kansas City Women’s Centre provides a surreal beginning to the day as 49 beefy blokes file into a women’s refuge, griping about how rubbish their wives are around the house.

Mike Becker, he of the elephant story, says that he got a call from his daughter.

The dog has eaten a sock,” she told him. “Well, is your mom there?” asked Mike.

“The dog has been sick on mom.”

Mike admits that he felt a certain triumph that it was his wife, not him, wiping up dog sick.

And this is the reason most give for coming to the convention — for one day a year, they get to relax and chat to other men about Baby Einstein. Because there’s really no one else who understands — especially not women.

“It’s bizarre,” says David Hallowes from Massachusetts. “But the one group who are least accepting of stay-at-home dads are stay-at-home moms. They don’t even bother to talk to you.” Chris Ford from Las Vegas nods, “I’ve been at playgroups where women literally talk over me as if I’m not there. You start to think, who has the issues here?”

This all sounds eerily familiar. In the cosy suburbia of Middle England, I have found a similar degree of intolerance in the closed, women-only world of play parks and toddler groups. Only last week a mother pulled her daughter away from my son and me as we played in a sandpit, muttering, “What have I told you about talking to strange men?”

The Equal Opportunities Commission says that in Britain in the 1970s, men spent on average 15 minutes a day with their children. Today this has risen to two hours each day. At the same time the number of mothers looking after their children has fallen from 1.8 million in 1997 to 1.5 million.

Women are going out to work and men are sharing the childcare, but social attitudes have failed to keep up. “People still think we’re all bumbling idiots who are feeding the kids beer with breakfast,” smiles Dayv.

So with all this hostility and misunderstanding, why would anyone choose to become an at-home dad? “It’s always the same reasons,” says Andy Ferguson. “She earns more than him, or he was better suited.”

Certainly, the first reason is amply represented at the convention — wives’ occupations include a senior executive with Citibank, a clinical research scientist and at least three doctors — but it is the latter reason that is most interesting. Put simply, in the 21st century fathers might actually be better suited to childcare.

Dave Lux tells me about Dr Kyle Pruett, of the Yale School of Medicine, who spoke at the convention two years ago. Dr Pruett has found that the way fathers raise their children is very different. “One example is that men rarely do baby talk,” says Dave. “We talk to our kids normally and, as a result, they are more likely to talk correctly earlier. So in some respects, dads might actually be better for the kids.”

The real eye-openers come in the ‘open forums’ where the dads sit in a circle and air their grievances: “I feel like I’m trapped in the wheel, just going from day to day,” says one dad. “You’re ‘on’ 24/7, you never get a rest.”

The day ends with ‘Anecdotes’, a convention tradition where dads stand up to tell stories. Greg Barbera from North Carolina leads off with an unprintable story about his son’s penis. Then Eric Hertzfeldt brings out a story that completely sums up the at-home dad revolution.

One day Eric’s wife was helping their three-year-old son Daniel fix a toy in their kitchen. Pleased with herself at having successfully mended it, she said proudly: “Who’s the best momma in the whole world?” Daniel thought about it for a moment, then looked up at his mother and gave the only answer he could. “Daddy,” he said.

© The Daily Telegraph