We’re in the midst of a child care crisis in America, but when fathers want to take on more childcare to equal their partners’ efforts, they are being stymied by their employers.
Max, who requested to go by a pseudonym, spent 15 years as a contractor: no benefits, little job security, and frequent change. When recruited for a full-time role, he was upfront about his wife’s pregnancy and his need to take parental leave when their first-born child was due.
“I said, ‘I’m going to be flexible—I don’t have to take off right away and I can do it in stints.’ I was offering these different plans because it was important to me for the company to be successful,” Max says. “The recruiter said ‘Don’t even worry about it. Take your leave, and the company policy is 16 weeks.’”
When Max accepted the job offer, this flexibility evaporated. A company representative told him, “Sorry for the misinformation you received, but this is our policy and we will not be making an exception.” They’ve held firm on this stance in the months that followed, leaving him with a combination of vacation and sick days to use once his child is born.
Currently, the average annual cost associated with daycare sat at $15,570 in 2025, and 1.3 million workers (89% being women) report having to work part-time or miss work entirely due to childcare problems.
Yet paternity policies—and workplace taboos—are leaving men without the flexibility to take leave when it’s offered. Only 17% of Fortune 500 companies offer equal leave to mothers and fathers; even when they do, dads are often discouraged from taking it all.
Both stigmas and stingier policies for fathers make it hard for some dads to step away. Getting approval is riddled with bureaucratic traps, managerial pressure, subverted gender roles, and unspoken consequences. Men are ready to step up, but employers aren’t ready to let them.
When men are no longer the “ideal employee”
Max’s story is extreme, but the underlying challenge is pervasive. Companies often broadcast an encouraging approach to parental leave for men while taking a dimmer view internally. Among Fortune 500 companies, less than one in five offer equal leave to mothers and fathers. Researchers suggest that 10% of companies may offer mothers so much more bonding time than fathers that they may not comply with federal anti-discrimination laws.
The American workplace is built upon the notion that ideal employees have no competing obligations outside of work: No sick children to care for, no after-school pickups, no post-partum spouses or complicated pregnancies requiring extended leave. Gender norms mostly supported this framework. Men focused on bringing home a paycheck while women tended to the home. However, today when 95% of fathers and over 79% of mothers have full-time jobs according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, this model no longer works.
Simultaneously, days are getting longer: off-hours work chats have increased 15% year-over-year. Meetings after 8pm are up 16% every year. Almost three-quarters of parents feel guilty or conflicted about how they divide their time between work and family—often downplaying their home life to avoid being seen as less dedicated at work.
However, when men want to step away to help their partners, they are penalized by their workplaces, who assume they aren’t fully committed to work.
“The expectation is that men don’t need to take leave,” says Richard J. Petts, Professor of Sociology at Ball State University. “There’s no physical need for men to take some time off, and so the idea of men taking long periods of leave runs counter to the expectation that men should be prioritizing work above all else.”
Fathers who take parental leave face what Petts calls the “commitment penalty.” They’re often perceived as less dedicated and worthy of promotion. This penalty may even make them more likely to be laid off in the long run.
“Men who take leave are viewed as less committed to their job,” Petts says. “They’re more likely to be fired, less likely to be promoted. These biases are still prevalent in workplace culture: if you take an extended period of time off, you’re demonstrating a commitment to your family above the workplace.”
More than two thirds of fathers in one survey felt pressured to return to work early, citing unspoken rules as the main reason they didn’t take their full leave. Dads who take leave also experienced a 15.5% earnings drop on average. Having a leave policy for fathers doesn’t protect them from informal punishment for taking it.
When leave requests get return to sender
When Ben, a non-profits professional, was ready to take parental leave for his second son’s birth, his request was nearly derailed by an interoffice letter—not an email nor a phone call—that flagged a paperwork issue. Had he not checked his physical mail slot before packing up, his claim would have been denied.
“Nothing ever gets sent through interoffice mail at the organizations I work at because we have this thing called email,” Ben says. He was astounded that his leave was almost canceled due to a bureaucratic technicality delivered via the office equivalent of snail mail—with only three days to go.
Although his manager was supportive of his parental leave, Ben was left wondering if this wasn’t a way for HR to subvert his request at the last moment.
“It was some type of bureaucratic nonsense about forgetting to check a box, or something very minor. I couldn’t believe that HR had not reached out to me in any capacity. No phone calls, or anything, to say my parental leave was not approved.”
When Ben returned from leave, a senior female colleague made a joke specifically at his expense for taking time off.
“There were 15 people on a call, and we were discussing coverage plans for a person who was about to go on maternity leave. She said she had to make sure the woman showed up before the call ‘before she goes to Ben-land,‘” he says. “She said it was because I ‘go on leave all the time.‘” Although the colleague was reprimanded for the comment and made an apology, the jab at him still stings.
Ben, however, is comparatively lucky. He got his leave, and he got to keep his job.
Burke, an academic editorial consultant, has always strived for full parity between him and his wife. His father was a commercial pilot who was gone for several days at a time. His father was a commercial pilot who was gone for days at a time, leaving his mother to manage the household largely alone—and leaving Burke determined to be as present for his son as possible.
When Burke and his spouse were expecting their first child, he planned to take the full amount of Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) available to him. His employer did not provide parental leave for fathers at that time.
“My departmental boss did not want me to take FMLA,” Burke says. “She was pretty much guilting me to not take it by telling me how much extra work it would create for my manager while I was gone.”
Human Resources did not push back against Burke’s request, but the message from his manager was clear: be a supportive husband and a present father or be a team player at work. Burke was not only the only man in the office who had requested family leave up until that point, but also the only parent-to-be in an office where young women comprised the majority of the workforce.
Ultimately Burke chose to take FMLA for the full extent permissible. Within a year he was placed on a performance improvement plan and eventually took on a role at another publisher. He isn’t sure if there’s a connection between his parental leave and his PIP—he left the company before he could find out—but doesn’t disqualify it. Burke now consults and focuses on raising his son, rather than juggling the demands of full-time work and full-time parenting.
Fathers still go it alone with parental leave
Fathers who have the opportunity to take leave have a few options, even if they might face entrenched stigmas in the process. Petts recommends fathers advocate for themselves.
“If your company has a policy, fight to use it. And if you get pushback from your manager, finding support from your coworkers can help,” he says.
Finding that help, however, can be a challenge. For Ben and Burke, two fathers in women-dominated workplaces, had no equivalent support systems that often exist for new mothers returning to work.
“I didn’t know anything. Because women are in the workforce, there’s literature, there’s culture, there’s community. There’s a club, so to speak, about how you navigate being a working mother. People do not talk about what it means to be a working father,” Burke says.
“Working in non-profits, the majority of my colleagues have always been female. Just by the numbers alone, you’re going to see fewer men taking leave. There was no other father whom I could talk to. I didn’t have anyone who could give me a heads up about how to deal with these issues,” Ben says.
Employers can help encourage men to take parental leave by offering policies directed specifically at fathers. This, Petts argues, does more to encourage parental equality since it can result in broader uptake among fathers.
“Our expectations of family are still gendered, particularly in the workplace. If we don’t single fathers out, we often resort to assumptions that these policies really are just for mothers. If you have a gender-neutral policy, but only women use the policy, then you don’t have an equality framework at all,” Petts says. “You need more men to take leave, because that’s going to actually promote equality.”
However, Petts points out, even with policies in place, manager support is essential. “Your life as a worker is conditional in large part on your boss and how you’re treated by your manager,” Petts says. “ Even when a policy is in place, if the expectation from your manager is that taking leave comes with consequences, you’re not going to take the leave.”
Max met with HR for the final word on the leave he was promised when joining the company. He was told he can borrow an additional 80 hours of sick and vacation time combined, but he would not be able to take paid leave until the balance resets.
“I pointed out all the inconsistencies of them denying me the promised leave,” Max says. They held firm: I get zero paternity leave. They tried to frame [providing me with] ordinary sick and vacation time as being generous.”
The experience has soured his perception of the company. “The values they claim to have are performative nonsense,” Max says.
Workplace gender norms cut both ways, particularly in an era where men want to be more than breadwinners that dedicate themselves to their career. Women fought tooth and nail for their right to be in the workplace; now, many fathers find themselves fighting for the right to stay home.