Full disclosure: When you read this, I’ll be out on parental leave. As I’ve been prepping and planning, I’ve been thinking a lot about what my own parents went through, wondering what will be the same and what I’ll try to do differently. Birth and early parenting are famously hard to predict or truly plan for. But there’s one big difference that I know will matter. Like a growing number of new dads now, my partner will be able to take 12 full weeks of paid parental leave thanks to our statewide paid family and medical leave program.
That’s a big deal for me, looking at the daunting prospect of recovering from birth while also figuring out how the whole newborn situation works. Nobody should have to face that alone. It makes a huge difference to have a partner or other close caregiver around to pick up after-care supplies, make nutritious meals or help with wound recovery and basic life needs in the event of a c-section. Not to mention having a second pair of hands to cover a share of baby soothing and night feeds to free up precious hours of time for a new mom to sleep.
The research bears out how that support can benefit families. In studies looking at heterosexual couples, when new fathers take paid leave they are more confident and more involved caregivers for their kids. It also improves mothers’ mental health and ability to breastfeed, and helps the quality of the parents’ relationship.
But for kids born in the 80s and 90s, having a dad take much time to stay home during those first weeks and months of life was pretty rare. In fact, the Census Bureau reports, among fathers of children born before 1994, nearly 80 percent took no time off at all, and fewer than 20 percent took any paid time off. At that time, there were no national or state policies that guaranteed new dads paid parental leave.
That started to change in the 2000s, with California becoming the first state to enact paid family leave, with benefits starting in 2004. In the two decades since, 14 more states have followed. As a result just over one-third of men as well as women working in the private sector will have access to paid family leave through a state program once all programs are fully implemented. That will include about 1.3 million new parents annually.
Those policy changes go hand-in-hand with social changes over time, and are helping parental leave for dads become the new normal. I’ve seen this in the National Partnership’s own research on state paid leave programs, which has found new dads increasingly taking leave. Back in 2014, about 12 percent of employed new fathers in California took parental leave through the state’s program. But when I crunched more recent data, including a look at more recently-enacted programs, I found that share is rising.
In Connecticut, just one year after the state program rolled out, about a third of eligible new fathers were using it. In the first three years of Washington state’s program, the share of eligible new fathers taking state paid leave climbed from just over one-third, to 45 percent, to 55 percent. (Take a look at the full report, Strong State Evidence for Paid Leave: A Look at Connecticut, Rhode Island and Washington State, for a deeper dive.)
That still leaves room to grow, of course. (I’ll see if the National Partnership can host a party for the first state that hits 100 percent!) And my analysis found some inequities in leave-taking by income level, particularly for the very lowest-wage men. We need to do more to make sure that men in lower-wage jobs know about their right to leave. We also must ensure that paid leave programs provide high enough wage replacement, which especially impacts men’s leave-taking. Finally, we must guarantee workers full protections against losing their jobs or facing retaliation in the workplace for taking leave. Culture is changing fast, but potential stigma and blowback at work are still seen as barriers to men taking their share of leave.
This Father’s Day, let’s celebrate the strides we’ve made toward policies that let dads step up and support their parenting. And let’s commit to expanding access to paid family leave so that all new fathers have the opportunity to bond with their kids and care for their loved ones.
