Conclusion

Dads today recognize that their role has shifted and expanded from the roles of men in past generations, including their own fathers. Dads are overwhelmingly happy about their new roles and take pride in the care work they are doing. The vast majority of dads (over 90 percent) also view love, affection, and the teaching of children about life to be “very important,” while only about three-quarters view providing for the child financially as “very important.”

Despite some contradictory findings on respondents’ ideal sense of roles parents should take on, there are countless indicators in this report that dads want to be more involved in the daily care of their children and in ways that exceed financial providing. These indicators of major transformations in notions of fatherhood from just a few decades ago should give families and supporters of gender justice hope that more equal parenting is possible.

The next steps for achieving equal parenting should focus less on changing the hearts and minds of individual men, that is, winning them to a more modern, involved notion of fatherhood, as views have already shifted, and should focus instead on policy and workplace changes: creating jobs that not only provide adequately for more families but also offer more schedule control and flexibility to combine work and care responsibilities, as well as social policies that support families in these struggles and prioritize time to care as much as time to work.

Fathers, like most of the population, agree that the work of caring for their children and families is valuable. But public policies and workplaces reward paid work over unpaid caregiving, creating situations in which many men and women feel they are strapped for time and cannot risk losing income by being more active caregivers.

Affordable child care, paid paternity leave for dads of newly born, adopted of foster babies and paid caregiving leave for both parents throughout their children’s lives, and adequate wages that enable families to have quality time with their children without fearing financial ruin, are all essential to allowing dads who already are actively engaged in their children’s daily care to take on an even greater role.

Here are three concrete measures families, employers, and policymakers must take to achieve gender-equal parenting and to meet the needs and desires of mothers and fathers across the United States.

Takeaways for Dads and Families

• Continue to speak out about how you value men’s involvement in daily caregiving and the benefits it brings to you and your family.
• Join fathers’ and mothers’ groups that support robust work-life policies, wherever possible.

Takeaways for Employers

• Provide gender-neutral family-supportive policies, including paid leave, to all employees, part-time and full-time, and create work cultures that support men using the policies. Support action for universal, portable benefits through the federal government.
• Discuss workplace policies around family life in gender neutral terms. Provide examples that include men using the policies and normalize the notion that male employees are also caregivers outside work.
• Give men as well as women the flexibility to determine their schedules and where they work from, where possible.

Takeaways for Policymakers

• Implement universal paid family leave for all working families, available not only after the birth of a child but throughout life.
• Improve workplace standards to help families feel more stable, increasing the federal minimum wage to a livable level, establishing portable, widely accessible and affordable healthcare and childcare that do not depend on employment, but stay with families through employment changes and breaks from employment.

This report confirms that a new kind of fatherhood—premised on love, teaching, and direct care for children—has already replaced the father-as-provider, separate spheres model of parenting in the United States. Dads, families, and supporters of gender equality should mark and celebrate this rapid, historic transformation in roles. They should also note that fathers and mothers are not yet satisfied: Though the majority of parents today see equally shared parenting as the standard they hope to achieve, they still see inequality around them.

And yet, through this survey and focus group, parents have also named what they believe to be the culprits—a lack of time, a lack of resources, overbearing jobs, and in some cases, stigma and a lack of support for men as caregivers. This report has shown the key elements of a path toward equal parenting. For progress toward engaged fatherhood and equal parenting to continue, policymakers and employers will have to act.