More dads taking paid family leave for a new baby, sometimes as much as moms are

Karlo Campana is usually outnumbered these days. He has three young kids under age 4.

On a recent Saturday, he played a mini-game of basketball with his two older kids in their Southern California home, shooting a ball into a hoop on the door, while his baby boy watched from his bouncy chair.

Campana took paid time off in May after the birth of his son — just as he did for his daughters.

It's sometimes called "bonding" or "family" leave, to distinguish it from the paid leave ("maternity" or "disability" leave) that mothers can take to physically recover from childbirth.

"You need that adjustment period," he said. Campana, who works at an ad agency, said having the time off not to think about work — or worry about losing income during that time — was crucial for him and his family during a sleep-deprived period.

"My wife isn't doing it on her own," he said. "She doesn't feel like she's alone on this journey. She feels like she has support." He jokes that by kid No. 3, he thought he had nailed diaper changes without too much mess — but he was wrong.

"The benefits are I get to spend time with each of them when they were in the infant stage, the baby stage, and I get to hold them and, you know, change the poopy diapers," he said. " It's like the funny moments of, like, being a parent, like, 'This is it right here, you're in the thick of it.'"

Campana is among a growing number of fathers who take leave to bond with a new child in the states that offer paid family leave programs — and are part of a larger cultural shift that has seen dads handle more caregiving duties.

In California — as in several other states — men make up about half of bonding claim applications. Last year, men even surpassed women — as in Colorado and Washington — for the first time in the state's history. This trend comes at a time when the federal government has said it wants Americans to have more babies, and families report affordability is an obstacle in raising them.

There's no federal law guaranteeing paid parental leave, but California is one of 14 states, plus Washington, D.C., that have passed legislation to enact paid family leave programs — and in many of those places, more dads are opting in.

"We're in a very different place in terms of our understanding of gender roles, of paternity leave, of dads' roles than we were 20-plus years ago," said Molly Weston Williamson, policy director at Paid Leave for All, an organization that advocates for paid family leave policies.

California's program offers, within a year, up to eight weeks of paid bonding leave for parents after a birth, adoption, or foster care placement. That's on top of six to eight weeks of paid disability leave that moms get to recover after birth.

Campana said he initially wasn't sure if he should take paternity leave because of lingering gender stereotypes.

" I felt guilty, for sure," Campana said. " I think dads maybe feel they need to be the provider. They need to be the ones that are only helping their family by bringing money or working."

Campana said that when he was growing up, his father worked three jobs. "It was hard for him to be present, and I think that's the one thing now — it's like, 'No, be present. Be there for your kids.'"

Research has shown that paternity leave confers benefits beyond allowing a father extra time to bond with a new child: It has positive effects on the whole family, including better health outcomes for both parents.

Paid parental leave has also been linked to lower odds of postpartum depression and a decrease in infant mortality rates.

In California, men accounted for 51% of bonding claims filed in 2025. It's a massive shift from when the state program started in 2004, and men made up about 18% of claim applications.

States fund their paid family and medical leave programs with different combinations of employer and employee contributions; California is among six states where family leave is entirely funded by employee payroll deductions.

In addition to changing gender norms, Williamson said other factors are likely contributing to the increase in claims by men in the state: greater awareness about the program, and recent changes to the benefit.

In 2025, the state boosted the amount of income a worker can recoup while on family leave. Now, in California and in other states, the leave benefit can be as high as 90% of their regular salary.

"That makes it a realistic option for a lot more families, and I think we're seeing dads and moms responding to that change," Williamson said. Still, she said, there's a lot the new data about dads isn't telling us.

"We're getting one particular vantage point into this data, which is useful and valuable, but it's only telling us sort of part of the story, and we'd need other kinds of information to better understand the full picture," Williamson said.

"Is it that more dads are working and therefore are potentially eligible for these benefits? Is it that women are deciding not to take leave?"

While private employers can offer their own paid leave as a benefit, this data also reflects only people who took leave through California's paid family leave program.

A spokesperson for the California Employment Development Department, which administers the state's family leave program, said the department couldn't provide definitive reasons for the increase in male bonding claims.

One thing is clear: The growth in these states comes as more parents are feeling strained economically.

President Trump has said, "We want more babies," and has promoted policy initiatives like expanding access to in vitro fertilization and offering investment accounts for newborns.

"People really are very worried about the affordability of kids," said Jeremy Pope, a professor of political science at Brigham Young University, and a principal investigator of the American Family Survey.

According to the latest survey in 2025, 7 in 10 Americans said raising children had become unaffordable, according to the survey. It was the biggest single-year jump since the survey started more than a decade ago.

"I don't think they want government involved in the decision to have kids," Pope said. "But they worry a lot about how much it costs and they would like to see ways of making those costs smaller or getting help with those costs."

The Pew Research Center found in a recent survey of full-time working parents who are not self-employed, 84% said paid parental, family, or medical leave would be "extremely or very helpful" to them, but only half said it was available to them.

This story comes from NPR's health reporting partnership with LAist and KFF Health News.