Introduction and Background

Even prior to the COVID-19 crisis that has pushed many American families to the breaking point, people with vastly different ideologies found themselves overwhelmed with work and care. In the midst of a global pandemic, many families have no access to paid sick days or paid leave policies to ensure they can take care of themselves or family members, and avoid spreading contagions. In other advanced economies, paid family and medical leave policies play a key role in family economic security, taking the place of infant care. Parents in the United States must rely on our child care systems within weeks of giving birth, and coronavirus has exposed just how precarious those systems are. Without policy support and sufficient funding, our care systems are falling apart. Childcare on average costs a married couple 11 percent of their income, and single parents 36 percent of their income, yet early care and education workers make poverty wages. There’s also a widening shortage of home care workers.

Polling data shows widespread public support for paid family and medical leave. Yet in the run-up to the 2020 elections, although more candidates proposed childcare plans than in previous elections, candidates across the political spectrum have done little to center these issues in debates and substantive policy discussions. In the Democratic-presidential primary debates, candidates had minimal discussions on paid family and medical leave (which had only nine mentions across debates) and childcare, as issues of economic security. However, since then, former Vice President Joe Biden recently announced his “Build Back Better” plan to create 3 million new jobs in caregiving and education, as well as establish a federal paid family and medical leave program, signaling support for family economic security. During his 2016 campaign, President Trump only proposed a plan for paid parental leave for mothers, not the more expansive family and medical leave policies that would extend paid leave to workers needing to care for themselves or adult loved ones. Since then, his administration has included paid parental leave in his budget proposals, but the administration has not worked with Congress to advance permanent national paid family leave benefits for private sector workers, nor presented solid details on a potential paid leave and caregiving platform for the 2020 campaign cycle.

And while lawmakers in the spring of 2020 passed temporary emergency paid family leave to help parents with children whose schools and child care centers have closed because of the pandemic, millions of workers were exempted, and the legislation is set to expire at the end of 2020. Democrats and a handful of Republican lawmakers in Congress have proposed more permanent paid leave and care legislation, yet those policies have not garnered enough bipartisan support from legislators to pass.

To better understand how political party identity may impact the caregiving attitudes and behaviors of people across gender, and the use of and need for paid family and medical leave, the Better Life Lab at New America and NORC at the University of Chicago collected nationally representative survey data on caregiving. Contrary to conventional wisdom among lawmakers that caregiving and paid leave are niche issues only relevant to women, results of this survey indicate there is widespread bipartisan support for paid family and medical leave for caregivers, and that respondents across political ideologies are equally likely to have taken leave from their jobs to care for a family member or newborn. This report explores in detail how men and women of different political party affiliations align and diverge on their attitudes toward care, work-care conflict, and paid family and medical leave.

Throughout 2019, the Better Life Lab at New America conducted a multi-modal study of men and caregiving in the United States, with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Pivotal Ventures, an investment and incubation company created by Melinda Gates. This research included a quantitative component: a nationally representative survey of 2,966 Americans, in partnership with NORC at the University of Chicago, including oversamples of adult men and fathers of children zero to eight years old. This is part of a larger series of reports on men and care. Click here for more information on survey methodology.

This report explores partisan similarities and differences on care and paid family and medical leave, with additional analysis on gender differences and an emphasis on political party data. Eighty percent of our survey respondents identified themselves as Democrats or Republicans, and 20 percent of respondents identified themselves as “Independents,” which included those with no affiliation to a specific political party. Because of the smaller percentage of Independent respondents, and since Independents tend to have more widely varying beliefs within their group, charts and figures highlight the significant similarities and differences between Democrats and Republicans. Independents are included throughout the charts and report for additional context on where Americans who identify as neither Republicans nor Democrats stand on these issues.

In this survey, family and medical leave was defined as time off from work to take care of others for longer than a day or two. Respondents were asked about both paid and unpaid time off for this purpose.