More Dads Are Taking Paid Paternity Leave
Fathers are taking nearly equal shares of bonding leave in many state programs, reflecting a shift with documented benefits for families.
By Emily Tate Sullivan | August 11, 2026A.J. Johnson’s oldest son was born in 2019, the year residents of his home state of Washington could receive benefits from its newly passed paid family leave program. Johnson, a full-time firefighter, had to save up accrued sick leave to take time off around his son’s birth. He took six weeks off to bond with his son and said he was grateful for the time, though he felt he had to fend off his “grizzly, old, mustachioed” co-workers who bragged about taking just two hours to be in the hospital for their children’s births before returning to work.
But it was very difficult on him and his wife. “It was certainly shorter than I wanted,” he said. His wife, a middle school counselor, was able to take a lengthy leave of absence from work and then had the summer off. But his son still wasn’t even sleeping through the night when Johnson had to return to work. “It was really hard,” he recalled. He worked 24-hour shifts and was anxious about leaving his wife and newborn at home alone for such long periods of time.
Things were completely different when his second son was born in late 2021 and Washington’s paid family leave program was fully established. He was able to take about five months of paid leave total, including 12 weeks through the paid family leave program and an additional eight weeks of sick leave. He also added accrued vacation time on top to ensure he received his full pay beyond the state’s benefit cap and kept his benefits. “It was like nothing changed financially for us, but we got to have that almost six months of time together,” he said. “Having the ability to be there for my 3-year-old and my wife, but also being able to bond with my newborn, was the most amazing [few months] of my life.” He felt much more bonded to his younger son than his first after spending uninterrupted time together instead of “rushing off to go back to work and being gone for an entire day,” he said. “I was able to more quickly become a more confident parent.”
It was also particularly useful at a time when children still couldn’t get COVID-19 vaccinations. Johnson and his wife were able to figure out how to entertain and protect their children together. It allowed them to “just spend time together and navigate what it’s like to be a family of four, not having to worry about not going to work or one of us not being there when we’re trying to put a baby to sleep or bathe the kids,” he said.
By the time he took time off for his second son, the workplace culture around him had changed, too — which he chalks up to his state’s implementation of paid family leave. The men he works with now almost uniformly take the full amount of paternity leave available to them. They think, he said, “I have this opportunity to spend an extended period away from work and with my family and I’m going to take it.”
Fourteen states and Washington, D.C., now have paid family leave. In most of those programs, fathers are now taking nearly equal shares of bonding leave to spend time away from work with their new children as mothers, according to a from Paid Leave For All, an advocacy organization. In two states, Colorado and Washington, men are actually taking a greater share of bonding leaves. And in states where men aren’t yet taking equal shares of bonding leave, they increased their share last year compared to the year before.
“Dads really want to be able to take leave to bond with their children, and when presented with the opportunity through this public investment, dads are showing up, stepping up and taking advantage of this opportunity,” said Molly Weston Williamson, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and author of the Paid Leave for All report.
The findings track a trend in the rest of the country in which more and more men have been taking paid leave to bond with their new children in recent years. But in the that don’t yet have paid family leave programs, fathers still aren’t on par with mothers, according to by the Center for Economic and Policy Research. As of 2018, only of Americans worked at a job that offers paid paternity leave to all workers. Indeed, it is in the states with paid family leave where gender parity in bonding leave has advanced the most. “State paid leave programs are providing the opportunity for dads to do the thing they have wanted to do all along, but don’t necessarily have the ability to do elsewhere,” Williamson said.
Men in states with paid family leave programs are also much less likely to forgo taking leave at all. Before any of the programs started up, three-quarters of fathers took no leave to spend time with their newborns, compared to less than 18% of mothers, according to the CEPR report. “There’s been a total explosion in the number of claims from men,” Williamson said. “Virtually all of the growth in bonding leave claims has come from this massive, massive increase in claims from men.”
That trend looks set to continue, Williamson said. Comparing numbers from this year to last, the share of dads just keeps growing. “That is really suggesting this is a lasting trend — we’re not seeing a blip,” she said.
The Paid Leave for All report could only examine full data for programs that have been in operation for a year or more, which include nine states and Washington, D.C. But preliminary data from those that launched in 2026 is also promising, according to Paid Leave For All’s report. In Delaware, fathers took 46% of bonding leaves, compared to 54% for mothers, and in Maine it was 44% for fathers and 56% for mothers. The gap was wider in Minnesota — 36% of bonding leaves for fathers compared to 64% for mothers — but it was still off to a better start than California, the first state with a paid family leave program, where men took just 15% of bonding leaves in 2004, the program’s first year.
Things have also changed greatly in California and many of the other early states to get to such equal numbers. California and New Jersey, for example, have increased how much money employees can receive while on paid family leave and added job protection so they can return to their positions when leave is over, Williamson said. That’s helped fathers take more advantage of the programs: In New Jersey, men accounted for 11% of bonding leave claims in the program’s first year, and 33% last year, according to the Paid Leave For All report. Last year, California fathers accounted for 50% of bonding leaves.
Research has revealed that there are a multitude of benefits when fathers take paternity leave. It can . The confidence fathers gain from caring for and bonding with their newborns has been found to when their children are older and help them with their children. Paternity leave also how heterosexual couples share childcare and paid work, with fathers more likely to at home. Research shows the benefit can and can . When fathers take leave, it benefits mothers too: it , improves their and increases .
“Dads taking leave is good for everybody,” Williamson said.
James Liu, who works for a small technology company in San Francisco, took his 12 weeks of leave in two batches a year ago when his daughter was born. For him, living in a state that has had a paid family leave program for over 20 years, the culture of men taking leave was already solidified. “Most families I know, both parents took leave,” he said. “I almost took it for granted: ‘Oh yeah, if we have a child, I’ll take leave.’”
Liu’s employer topped off California’s program, giving him a bit more time than the state’s mandated eight weeks and covering his full pay while he was out. The first month he took off was mostly spent surviving the chaos of the early infant days, but he took the rest of his time when his daughter was 5 months old and his wife went back to work, and it was far more meaningful. “It really helped me grow in confidence as a dad,” he said. “Having that one-on-one time, I really felt like I’m a primary parent, too.”
Had he not been able to get paid while on leave, Liu thinks he would still have taken time off, but he said it would definitely have been for a shorter amount of time — possibly only for a week or two at the start of his daughter’s life. He’s grateful not just for the time with his daughter, but for the peace of mind bonding leave brought him. He was glad to have her cared for at home for so long before she started going to a childcare program and relieved that he didn’t have to worry about job security while he and his wife were on leave.
Liu and his wife started looking at childcare options when their daughter was just a few months old and realized that many Americans don’t get paid family leave and send their children to childcare just weeks after birth. “We felt really, really grateful for the time,” he said, while “almost mourning that this is not the default for many folks.”
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Emily Tate Sullivan is a contract early care and education correspondent at 91ɬ.
