Summary of Findings

The subject of men’s interest in and ability to take paid time off work for caregiving leave has become an important focus of national and global discussions of evolving masculinity norms and gender equality. Whether they become fathers or need to take care of family members and loved ones at other critical moments, men’s growing role as caregivers has not yet been matched by appropriate policy and social support.

For decades, the public discussion of paid leave has focused on new mothers’ rights to time off work for recovery after childbirth and time to bond with and nurture newborns. This has been of particular concern in the United States, virtually the only nation where mothers have no legal guarantee to paid leave. A number of countries found that long paid maternity-only leaves served only to reinforce traditional gender roles and the expectation that women should be primary caregivers, rather than foster gender equality. As a result, at the turn of the twenty-first century, several nations began to design new paid caregiving leave policies to encourage men to use it too. Research is finding that men who take paid parental leave become more involved in direct care and hands-on parenting, which can lead to closer attachment and better social, emotional, cognitive, and health outcomes for their children.¹ Further, research on paid parental leave finds that men taking paid time off work to care reduces family stress, improves the quality and stability of relationships with their partners, and increases paternal health and life expectancy.² Men taking paid leave to care and normalizing shared caregiving norms are also associated with narrowing gender wage and opportunity gaps.

As experts continue to grapple with the stalled progress toward gender equality in the United States, and as more states and Congress consider paid family and medical leave policy, it is critical to better understand what men want when it comes to taking time off work to give care, what enables them to take leave, and what prevents them from doing so. Further, it is important to learn whether and how men use leave, what they think about it, and what they anticipate needing in the future to care for themselves and their families.

In a study that included a nationally-representative survey and online focus group discussion boards, we found that men make up a significant portion of those who need to take time off work for care. We found that, while there are still tensions around masculine ideals around caregiving, economic factors, family attitudes and support, and workplace cultures and practices are key in driving both what motivates and what inhibits men from taking caregiving leaves.

In all, our study shows that, contrary to conventional wisdom, men not only have widespread experience taking caregiving leaves, though typically of short duration, but also significant anticipated need for paid leave for caregiving in the future. Because men in the United States typically tend to take no more than one week of leave following the birth of a child, and while the median length of leave for women is 11 weeks,³ our survey defined leave as “more than a day or two off work” in order to capture the broadest range of men’s experiences and anticipated need. Still, even with that expansive definition, it’s important to note that, while the survey found significant anticipated need for leaves to care for children or families, caregiving leaves are still relatively rare or difficult to access in America. While about half of mothers and fathers reported taking paid or unpaid leave for the birth or adoption of a child, nearly half didn’t even take two days off work. The numbers are even higher for paid or unpaid leave to care for family members, with about three-fourths of men and 69 percent of women reporting taking less than two days off work.

The study results also reveal that, rather than thinking caregiving is something only women do or should do, as traditional gender norms hold, Americans' attitudes toward men giving care and taking caregiving leaves are evolving, most notably among men themselves, and particularly among older men who’ve had more life experience. Yet, our findings point to key barriers men face that may prevent them from taking time off from work to engage in caregiving. These include financial concerns, inadequate workplace and manager support, and family and cultural barriers. These barriers are particularly challenging for low and median-wage earners who have the least access to paid leave. None of these barriers are adequately addressed in the current ad hoc system in America that relies on private companies to decide to voluntarily offer paid caregiving leave, or in public policy, where a piecemeal state system benefits only those lucky enough to live in the handful of states that offer the paid leave benefit to residents, and adequately enable them to use it.

We summarize our key findings below:

A solid majority of Americans believe that financial and workplace pressures shape men’s decisions around caregiving leave.

• Eighty-seven percent of Americans believe that economic factors are what chiefly influence men’s decision surrounding leave. A majority of American adults (70 percent) say that not being able to afford to take leave from work is a major reason that men don’t take leave, and another 17 percent say it’s a minor reason.

However, a majority say that support from both family and one’s employer are factors that enable men to make that choice.

• More than half (53 percent) of American adults think that support from family is a major reason why men take leave, with another 31 percent saying it’s a minor reason.
• Slightly less than one third (30 percent) of Americans said that managers supporting and encouraging their employees to take leave is a major reason why men are able to take leave from their jobs to give care. Another 35 percent said it’s a minor reason.
• One quarter (27 percent) of American adults think a lack of visible penalties for other male colleagues who’ve taken leave in their workplaces is a major reason why men take leave. Another third (34 percent) believe this is a minor reason.

Americans also overwhelmingly think men who do take leave do so because it’s the right thing to do, with more than 84 percent saying it’s a reason men take leave.

The survey also uncovered complicated and evolving views around the roles of men and notions of masculinity in America, and how masculine identity incorporates—or doesn’t incorporate—caregiving. It also found differences between men and women on the importance of these views.

• The survey asked men and women if the idea that caregiving isn’t “manly” is a factor in men not taking leave. Though a slight majority of people still hold more traditional views of gender roles, more men disagreed. Nearly half of men, 47 percent, rejected the notion that caregiving leaves aren’t manly. Forty-three percent of women say the same.
• Two in five (40 percent) American adults think a major reason that men don’t take leave is because they don’t need to, because their partners or other family members take the caregiving leave instead. And yet far fewer men think it’s a major reason why men don’t take leave (34 percent) than women (46 percent).

We also found that both men and women are finding ways to take time off for care now, though there are major disparities in the ability to do so.

• Despite the absence of a federal policy, or rather because of it, a significant number of American men and women find a way to take leave of “more than a day or two,” but often at a cost to themselves and their families.
• Confirming previous research, we also found that workers with more education and financial resources are more likely to have access to fully or partially paid leaves.⁴
• Although our survey did not address the duration of leave beyond more than two or three days, in our qualitative focus groups, several men reported that the paid leaves they were able to take were of a significantly shorter duration than they needed or wanted.

Both men and women anticipate needing to take time off work, particularly as they look to the future. Six in 10 adults say they anticipate needing to take time off in the future to care for a new child or adult family member. More than half of Americans anticipate needing leave in the future to care for ill, disabled, and elderly family members, and nearly a third anticipate needing leave to care for a new child.

• About three in 10 men anticipate needing leave to take care of a new child. Men and women are equally likely (30 percent) to say they will need this type of leave in the future.
• Half of the workforce (51 percent) anticipates needing time off at some point in the future to care for a sick, disabled, or elderly family member. There are no differences by gender, race, or ethnicity in anticipating leave.

Though many men report taking time off work to give care, they still lag behind women, but not by much.

• When it comes to paid or unpaid parental leave, 55 percent of mothers report taking some kind of leave following the birth or adoption of a new child, compared to 48 percent of fathers.
• Women are also slightly more likely to report taking leave to care for family members, with 31 percent of women taking leave from work to care for adults compared with a quarter (25 percent) of working men.
• Men are feeling the squeeze of the sandwich generation: 34 percent of men with children say they have taken leave to care for an ill, disabled, or elderly family member. Hispanic fathers are more likely than white fathers to say they have taken leave to care for an ill, disabled, or elderly family member (42 percent of Hispanic fathers versus 30 percent of white fathers).

Men are overall slightly less likely to have taken a caregiving leave from work than women. But when men do take leave, they’re more likely to be paid, and fully paid, than when women take it.

• Sixty-five percent of men who were able to take leave from work reported receiving some pay, compared with 53 percent of women who took leave, even though only women are eligible for partially paid disability insurance for the birth of a child, which some workers receive through their employer or a state public policy system.
• Men who received pay during leave were also much more likely than their women counterparts to say that leave was fully paid—52 percent of all men who took paid leave said their leave was fully paid, compared to just over a third (35 percent) of women.
• And while just 28 percent of men who took leave said that leave was unpaid, fully 40 percent of women who took leave reported receiving no pay while off of work.

Workers in low-income households are the least likely to have access to leave and to get paid when they take it.

• Workers in low-income households, who often have the least savings and who are the most likely to need every paycheck they earn to make ends meet, are the least likely to have access to paid leave. Among those workers able to take leave when they needed it, just 41 percent of workers in households earning less than $30,000 annually had leave that was partly or fully paid, compared with nearly three-quarters of the highest-earning workers—those earning $100,000 or more a year.
• Lower-income households are more than twice as likely to take unpaid leave for caregiving than higher-income households (52 percent to 24 percent).

As more states pass public paid family and medical leave policies, and as pressure mounts for a paid leave program at the federal level, this report highlights critical elements that policymakers must take into account when designing fair and effective policies that would cover all American workers and provide American families with the time, opportunity, and support they need to combine work and care responsibilities. These include job protection, adequate wage replacement, particularly for low-wage workers, evidence-based adequate duration of leave, protection from negative consequences at work, and universal access to caregivers of all genders.