Dads drive growth in California’s paid family leave program

In an indication of growing domestic equality, more recent dads are claiming paid family leave to bond with their babies and support their partners in the course of the first weeks of parenthood. In California, which has considered one of the nation’s oldest programs, men filed 44% of bonding claims last yr, up from 31% a decade prior, based on state statistics.

About 119,300 California men took paid family leave for bonding within the state’s fiscal yr that ended at the tip of June, up by 19%, or nearly 20,000, from 2020, based on California’s Employment Development Department. The number of girls taking state leave for bonding has held relatively regular at roughly 150,000 since 2019.

Not only are a brand new generation of fathers more more likely to embrace taking break day to construct a reference to their children, but more employers have normalized leaves for his or her male staff. Those attitudes, experts said, were strengthened in the course of the pandemic, when many men worked from home as their children learned remotely or played nearby.

“If you will have a male co-worker who takes paternity leave, you are more more likely to take paternity leave,” said Maya Rossin-Slater, associate professor of health policy at Stanford University.

Furthermore, research shows that when fathers take leave, moms are inclined to have higher health outcomes, with fewer hospitalizations for health complications and higher mental health results, Rossin-Slater said. The results on children, nonetheless, have yet to be adequately studied, she said.

Kevin Zapata, a 41-year-old Los Angeles-area marketing skilled, became considered one of those fathers who took paid leave to bond together with his baby when his daughter was born earlier this yr. He said family leave gave him the time to regulate to life with a brand new child while helping his wife recuperate from giving birth.

“Men are starting to understand that it makes a difference to be there,” Zapata said. “It doesn’t hurt to be the one changing diapers, to be the one feeding the infant, to be the one helping mom out.”

California generally provides as much as eight weeks of paid family leave. Recent parents can receive 60% to 70% of their pay, depending on income. The typical profit in fiscal yr 2022 was $806 every week. People giving birth may also receive as much as 12 weeks of paid disability leave. The applying form for paid leave asks recent parents to pick out their gender.

Outside California, residents of most states have access by law only to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave. At the very least a dozen other states have approved paid family leave programs.

In not less than a few of those states, the variety of men taking family leave is exploding. In Recent York, the number nearly doubled from 2018 to 2022. In Recent Jersey, it greater than tripled from 2014 to 2021.

In 2005, in the course of the early days of paid family leave in California, 83% of claims were filed by women and 17% by men. Since then, a lot of the growth in claims for leave has occurred amongst recent fathers.

California’s data doesn’t capture everyone who takes paid break day to take care of a toddler. A growing variety of employers now offer paid leave to staff as a profit, outside the state’s program. Which means a employee who receives an organization’s paid leave profit wouldn’t be eligible for the state program.

A few of the state’s wealthiest counties, including Marin, Orange, and San Diego, include or are near several large employers with generous paid family leave programs and have relatively low rates of men participating within the state’s paid leave program. The counties with the best rates of leave claims filed by men per 100 births in early 2023 were within the Central Coast: Monterey, San Benito, Santa Barbara, and Santa Cruz.

Nathaniel Miller, a 40-year-old digital media strategist within the Sacramento area, took paid leave earlier this yr to be together with his newborn son. His employer, the University of California, offers 100% income substitute for eligible earnings during bonding.

Miller said paid leave allowed his family time to search out child care. Miller and his wife are maximizing their son’s time with a parent by taking leave at separate times.

“At first, it was like, I’m not strong enough to carry him,” Miller said in September, while on paid leave. “Now my body’s getting more accustomed to holding him quite a bit and rocking him for naps. He’s getting more used to sleeping with me versus happening for naps with mom.”

It’s unclear whether California’s trend will proceed. The variety of men taking leave peaked between July 2021 and June 2022 before tapering out last yr.

Jenya Cassidy, director of the nonprofit California Work & Family Coalition, said California’s current advantages are too low to support many low-income families. A employee earning $3,000 a month would get about $416 every week in paid family leave advantages.

“It’s eight weeks paid at 60% of your gross income,” Zapata said. “It takes a success on us. That is why lots of people around my age delay having families or don’t even trouble to family-plan because they know of the struggle that it will possibly cause financially.”

Still, a brand new law signed last yr will allow paid leave to switch as much as 90% of wages for low-income staff and as much as 70% for others. The brand new rates take effect in 2025.

Nationwide, differences remain, each when it comes to paid leave availability and when it comes to men’s attitudes toward taking leave. About 33% of men and 45% of girls took paid bonding leave in the course of the last decade after the birth of their first child, census figures show. Including unpaid leave, sick days, and vacation time, about 67% of first-time fathers took bonding leave after 2015, compared with 96% of first-time moms. Women are inclined to take more weeks of leave.

Still, eight states have enacted paid family leave measures within the last six years. Advocates proceed to push for federal paid family leave. President Joe Biden has repeatedly proposed funding paid family leave. Then-President Donald Trump endorsed a paid family leave measure in 2020 that might have let recent parents collect on future child tax credits.

“We would really like as much as possible for California to be a model,” Cassidy said.

Phillip Reese is a knowledge reporting specialist and an associate professor of journalism at California State University-Sacramento.

This text was produced by KFF Health News, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation.

This text was reprinted from khn.org, a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is considered one of the core operating programs at KFF – the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism.