Building off Equimundo’s 2023 State of America’s Fathers report, the data presented here was collected by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) as part of a national report on working women’s challenges related to caregiving. IWPR generously shared the data with Equimundo for additional analysis on fathers and men’s reports of burdens and challenges related to caregiving, paid work and financial planning.
The 2023 State of America’s Fathers report showed that fathers affirm they are willing to work less to spend time with their children and that they will take action to do so. While the percentage of men who endorse care policies is lower than women, almost three-fourths of fathers affirm their support for key care policies.
Care work is in and of itself valuable and important, and it is also a critical part of our economy—it allows for labor participation and economic production—yet is too often underpaid and undervalued in this country. Parents want men to spend more time with their children, but workplace and government policies simply have not caught up. Data from Better Life Lab at New America show that more than 80% of men, regardless of their experience providing care or not, believed that unpaid care work at home is as valuable as paid work, valuable to society, and that men and women should share care responsibilities equally.