AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
The U.S. doesn't require paid time off for new parents. Instead, it leaves it up to states or employers to provide. In states that do require paid parental leave, an increasing number of fathers are taking time off to care for and bond with their children. In California, men now make up about half of those applying for the leave. Last year, they even surpassed women for the first time since the state started offering the benefit in 2004. Elly Yu of LAist News brings us this report.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD #1: Give me the ball.
(SOUNDBITE OF PLASTIC BALL BOUNCING)
KARLO CAMPANA: Ooh, lay it.
ELLY YU, BYLINE: It's Saturday night, and Karlo Campana is outnumbered. His two young girls take turns shooting a plastic ball into the hoop attached to their bedroom door. Campana goes in for a dunk.
(SOUNDBITE OF PLASTIC BALL BOUNCING)
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD #2: Ooh, did it (ph).
CAMPANA: Ooh. Just threw it, and it came back.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD #2: Yay.
YU: On the floor, their baby brother watches in awe from his bouncy chair.
CAMPANA: Want to shoot it, papas? Not yet?
YU: Campana is a dad of three in Orange County, California. He works at an ad agency. And when his son was born this spring, he took paid time off just as he did when his two older daughters were born.
CAMPANA: You need that adjustment. Like, nobody gives you a playbook.
YU: He says having the time off not to think about work or worry about losing income during that time was crucial for him and his family.
CAMPANA: I get to spend time with each of them when they were just, like, in the infant stage, the baby stage, and I get to hold them and, you know, change the poopy diapers, the pee-pee (ph) diapers.
YU: Research shows that paid parental leave benefits the whole family. It's linked to lower infant mortality rates, and paternity leave in particular is linked to better mental and physical health outcomes for moms.
CAMPANA: My wife isn't doing it on her own. I think people don't think about the mental strain. Like, you're - one, you're a little bit sleep-deprived. Like, both parents are involved - mom and dad. It's like, OK, now it's like a team is taking care of this.
YU: California offers up to eight weeks of bonding time for parents after the birth or an adoption of a child. That's on top of six to eight weeks of disability leave moms get to recover after birth. It's one of 14 states and D.C. that have enacted paid bonding leave programs, and more dads are opting in - in California, Colorado, and Washington, sometimes more so than moms.
MOLLY WESTON WILLIAMSON: I think we shouldn't discount the impact of culture change.
YU: Molly Weston Williamson is with the advocacy group Paid Leave for All. When California first started its program two decades ago, men made up fewer than 20% of bonding claim applicants at the time. Now men account for about half.
WILLIAMSON: 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.
YU: Williamson says there are other factors at play, too, for the growth. California boosted the amount of money workers can get. Now, in that state and in others, it can be as high as 90% of their regular salary.
WILLIAMSON: That makes it a realistic option, and I think we're seeing dads and moms responding to that change.
YU: Still, she says, there's a lot we don't know about the new data about dads. Are more dads than moms working and then filing claims? Are single moms able to access the benefit? One thing that's clear, the growth in these states comes as more parents are feeling strained economically. The American Family Survey out of Brigham Young University found that last year, 7 in 10 Americans said raising children was unaffordable, the biggest single-year jump since the survey started more than a decade ago. Jeremy Pope is a professor at BYU who worked on the survey.
JEREMY POPE: I don't think they want government involved in the decision to have kids, 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.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD #2: Baby. Baby.
YU: Back in Orange County, California, Campana juggles between his three kids. His toddler hands the baby the basketball briefly.
CAMPANA: Don't take it away.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD #1: Baby.
YU: At first, Campana wasn't sure he should take paternity leave. His dad worked all the time.
CAMPANA: I felt guilty, for sure. 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.
YU: But he says now he sees he's helping his family by being there. For NPR News, I'm Elly Yu in Los Angeles.
RASCOE: This story comes from NPR's partnership with LAist and KFF Health News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.