Dads’ Paid Parental Leave Is Good for Families

When A.J. Johnson’s second son arrived in late 2021, the Washington firefighter took about five months of paid leave, including 12 weeks of paid family leave granted through the state of Washington, and an additional 8 weeks of accrued sick time. “It was like nothing changed financially for us, but we got to have that almost six months of time together,” he told The74. 

The experience was markedly different from his entry to fatherhood two years earlier, when he had to cobble together six weeks of parental leave by using his sick leave — all while batting back the teases of his “grizzly, old, mustachioed” coworkers who bragged about returning to work two hours after their children were born. “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,” Johnson said. “I was able to more quickly become a more confident parent.”

That change came about in 2020, when lawmakers in Johnson’s home state approved legislation allowing up to 12 weeks of paid family or medical leave. Since then, his fellow firefighters have started to behave differently about dads taking time off too, and nearly universally take the full amount of family leave available. They think, “I have this opportunity to spend an extended period away from work and with my family and I’m going to take it,” he said.

Across the 14 states plus the District of Columbia that provide (or will soon provide) guaranteed paid family leave for new fathers, they can access a similar amount of bonding time as mothers, according to a recent report from Paid Leave for All. In Colorado and Washington, in fact, a larger share of fathers take family leave compared to mothers. Not only do new dads want to take leave to bond with their children — evidence shows that they do so when presented with the opportunity, which is excellent news for families.

Studies show that time at home for family leave lifts fathers’ own mental health. Moreover, the competence they build in those first weeks of the newborn phase shapes how they parent their school-age children and deepens the bond they carry into later years. It also rewires households for the better. Couples who share leave tend to split childcare and paid work more evenly, with dads picking up more of the domestic load that so often defaults to mothers — yielding happier partnerships and fewer divorces.

Mothers directly benefit, too. When a partner is home, research finds they nurse longer and report better mental health and higher life satisfaction. In the words of Molly Weston Williamson, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and author of the Paid Leave for All report, “dads taking leave is good for everybody.”

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