Oh, the indignity, the emasculation of it all!

A man and his minivan:

RECENTLY I became a full-time, stay-at-home dad, having assumed the "Mr. Mom" role because my wife makes more money than I do. I have taken this in stride, largely because it is just the slipperiest part of a slope I've been on for a while.

Three years ago I sold my sports car, a Mazda Miata deemed impractical by someone other than myself. My motorcycle stayed - stayed parked, that is - until this summer, when it also found a new owner, in deference to my all-consuming parenting role. Sacrifices have to be made.

But lines must also be drawn: the one indignity I have refused to suffer is admitting that I should now be driving a minivan, let alone actually going out and spending my wife's hard-earned money on one....

It's not just the soccer mom stigma that makes me shudder. I learned to drive in the mid-1980's in a horrid Ford Aerostar, meaning that sliding behind the wheel of a new minivan today is tantamount to embracing the fact that I have become my parents.

If there is any hope that I won't grow into a pathetic middle-age man, it must lie in my refusal to accept the minivan as destiny.

The rest of the article is a review of the Mazda 5 minivan, which the author, Jeff Sabatini, manages to conclude is "cool." (He talks of tossing his snowboard -- which he calls his "plank" -- in the back.)

Something that seems even harder to do than having kids without buying a minivan: talking about a man to staying home with the kids without using the term Mr. Mom.

Too bad the idea of men and children always has to have this aura of emasculation around it!

That said, minivans are awful, and you don't have to have one just because you have kids. I never considered buying such a thing, myself. There are a lot of options between sportscar and minivan.

But, hey, Jeff, didn't anyone ever tell you that a Miata is a lady's sportscar?