Equitable Care Requires Equitable Choices: How to Support Caregivers

Our data from 2019 and 2026 show that the problems of unequal and overwhelming caregiving in the United States no longer primarily stem from a lack of interest or involvement from men, if they ever did. Our surveys have shown that men overwhelmingly value care and caregiving: They not only want to actively engage in it but to share it equally. The real issue, then, is how to ensure that men can act on those beliefs, without workplaces, social judgments, and financial and health constraints stopping them.

In order to be the caregivers they want to be, people need enough income to care without facing a financial crisis, paid time away from work when care demands it, and enough control over their working lives to be present for the people who depend on them. Men also need permission—from workplaces, families, and themselves—to understand that providing care, not just providing income, is part of what it means to provide for a family.

The opportunity is larger than getting men to do more care. When men can care without sacrificing their livelihoods, women are less likely to be pushed into the role of default caregiver—and less likely to absorb the career and economic penalties that come with it. More equitable care at home can create more equitable work outside it.

Based on the data, here are key recommendations to redesign workplaces and shape public policies and cultural attitudes to make both equitable work and equitable care possible:

1. Guarantee paid family and medical leave that workers can actually afford to take. Our survey shows widespread need for paid leave for care. Create comprehensive public paid family and medical leave policies covering care for new children, seriously ill or disabled family members, and aging loved ones, with job protection and wage replacement high enough that lower-and middle-income workers can actually use it. We found that only 18 percent of lower-income respondents who took leave received fully paid leave, compared to 47 percent of higher-income respondents. For fathers, only 31 percent who earned the lowest wages (under $30,000 a year) reported taking fully paid leave, compared to 66 percent of fathers who earned the highest wages ($100,000 or more).
   
2. Give workers a meaningful right to flexibility, predictability, and schedule control. Advance fair workweek and scheduling protections as well as a meaningful right to request flexible work without retaliation. Importantly, don’t define flexibility only as remote work: Many lower-wage workers cannot work from home. For them, flexibility means predictable schedules, adequate notice, the ability to change shifts, reasonable control over start and end times, and time to respond to care emergencies.
3. Invest in caregiving to make it more sustainable. Raise wages and strengthen public investment in child care, aging and disability care, and the paid-care workforce. The survey found that young men who may hold more traditional breadwinner views aren’t rejecting caregiving; their attitudes are reflective of an era of economic bind of stagnating wages, rising costs, limited opportunity, and increasingly precarious “disposable” work, in which it can feel impossible to be both a good caregiver and a good provider. Policies that support higher wages and stable employment need to minimize that tradeoff rather than reinforce it.

1. Give workers more control over when, where, and how work gets done. To support men as caregivers, make flexibility the default wherever jobs permit it rather than a special accommodation caregivers have to request. For jobs requiring physical presence, redesign schedules to maximize predictability, worker input, shift-swapping, and control. The survey found that less than a quarter of workers have full schedule control—and that roughly three-quarters of caregiving workers would prefer remote, hybrid, or location-flexible work. That is one of the survey’s clearest calls to action for business leaders.
2. Provide paid caregiving leave—and make taking it normal for men. Offer employees adequate paid leave for birth, adoption, illness, disability, and older age  care, with equal access regardless of gender or caregiver type. Just as important, leaders and managers—especially men—should visibly take leave themselves and encourage others to do so. Measure whether workers actually use benefits, not merely whether they exist, and examine utilization by gender, wage level, and job type.
3. Build work cultures where caregiving is visible and valued. Track the data on employee caregiving duties, and listen and respond to what caregivers need. Evaluate employees on results rather than face time, constant availability, or willingness to work around the clock. Train managers in family-supportive behavior and creative problem-solving rather than penalizing workers for using flexibility or leave, and examine promotion, pay, and performance systems for caregiver penalties. Create resource groups for caregiving workers to connect and feel supported. No workers with care responsibilities, including men, should have to choose between demonstrating commitment at work and demonstrating commitment to their families.

1. Make caregiving part of the story of what it means to be a man. Advocates for gender-equal caregiving and for men should go beyond simply telling men to “do more” or talking about care as if it’s done primarily by women. Men already believe that fathers should be involved and care should be shared, and they are already taking on a great deal of adult caregiving. Show men’s caregiving as competent, responsible, meaningful, and difficult—and make visible the men already providing intimate, demanding care for children, parents, partners, and other loved ones.
2. Connect gender equity to economic and workplace reform. The next frontier of men’s caregiving isn’t primarily an attitude campaign. Advocate for paid leave, schedule control, adequate wages, affordable care, and worker protections as gender-equity policies and as advocacy for men’s well-being. These are what allow egalitarian beliefs to become egalitarian behaviors.
3. Expand the definition—and visibility—of who counts as a caregiver. Men are less likely to identify as caregivers, even when they are providing care. Campaigns, employers, service providers, and community organizations can explicitly include fathers, sons, brothers, husbands, and friends in caregiver outreach and resources. That can help make men’s care visible without erasing the disproportionate care burden women still carry.

1. Treat time for care—not just income—as part of men’s contribution to the family. Challenge the idea that men’s primary contribution to family well-being is earning money. Providing financially matters, but so do time, presence, emotional support, and hands-on care. 
2. Share ownership, not just tasks. Equitable caregiving means sharing the planning, noticing, scheduling, and responsibility for care—not one person managing the care and asking another person to “help.” Encourage boys and young men to learn caregiving skills early so becoming competent and confident in caregiving doesn’t become gendered.
3. Make care a normal subject of family planning. Talk explicitly about who will care for children, aging parents, and other loved ones before a crisis arrives: whose job has flexibility, whose income is most protected, who has leave, and how career and financial consequences will be shared rather than automatically absorbed by one person.