Fathers Now Account for Half of California Bonding Claims
Karlo Campana took paid family leave when each of his three children was born, and in California that choice now sits inside a much larger shift. Men accounted for 51% of bonding claims filed in the state in 2025, a striking change from the early years of the program, when fathers made up about 18% of applications in 2004. The trend is appearing well beyond one household in Southern California. In Colorado and Washington, men surpassed women in bonding claims for the first time in the states’ histories last year.
The numbers point to a practical change in how families are using paid leave. In California, the benefit can provide up to eight weeks of paid bonding leave within a year after a birth or adoption, and mothers can receive an additional six to eight weeks of paid disability leave to recover from delivery. For many families, that structure now makes leave usable for both parents rather than reserved almost entirely for the person who gives birth. In households where income loss once made leave feel impossible, the state benefit has become a more realistic option.
Campana described the leave as essential during the newborn period, when sleep deprivation is routine and the pressure to keep working can be intense. He said the time off allowed him to be present without worrying about losing pay, and it gave his wife visible support during a demanding stretch. His experience captures why bonding leave is more than a perk. For families with a new baby, time off is often the difference between shared caregiving and one parent carrying the entire burden.
Policy Design Is Reshaping Who Can Afford to Stay Home
California is one of 14 states, plus Washington, D.C., with paid family leave laws, and state programs differ in how they are financed. California is among six states where family leave is funded entirely through employee payroll deductions. In 2025, the state also raised the share of income workers can recoup while on leave. The benefit can now replace as much as 90% of regular pay, depending on earnings. For a worker weighing whether to step away from a job after a birth, that increase matters. A leave program that replaces a meaningful portion of wages is far more likely to be used than one that leaves parents to absorb a large income shock.
Molly Weston Williamson of Paid Leave for All said the rise in fathers’ claims reflects changing gender expectations, broader awareness of the program, and the recent benefit increase. Each of those forces likely matters, but none fully explains the shift on its own. Higher wage replacement reduces the financial penalty for stepping away from work. Greater familiarity with the program reduces the informational barrier. And changing attitudes toward caregiving reduce the cultural friction that once made men hesitate to claim leave at all.
The data still leave important blind spots. It captures only people who used the state program, not parents who received leave through private employers or those who had no access to paid leave at all. It also cannot show whether more fathers are eligible because more are working, or whether some mothers are choosing not to take leave. The claims data tell part of the story, but not the whole labor-market picture behind it.
Better Access to Leave Carries Family Health Consequences
Research has linked paid parental leave with benefits that reach beyond the workplace. Studies have associated paternity leave with better health outcomes for both parents, lower odds of postpartum depression, and reductions in infant mortality. Those findings fit a straightforward clinical and social logic: when parents have time to recover, sleep, feed, and learn infant care without losing income, stress falls and support rises. The postpartum period is not just a family adjustment; it is a biologically vulnerable window marked by sleep loss, emotional strain, and physical recovery for the birthing parent.
Paid leave also changes the division of labor in the earliest weeks of life. Fathers who take bonding leave can take on feedings, diaper changes, nighttime soothing, and the household tasks that often pile up after delivery. Those responsibilities are not cosmetic. They directly affect whether a mother can rest after birth, whether a newborn’s needs are consistently met, and whether both parents feel competent in the first weeks of caregiving. Campana’s description of being “in the thick of it” was informal, but the clinical reality behind it is serious: early support can reduce the isolation and overload that many parents face after a birth.
Affordability Pressure Is Driving Interest in Benefit Programs
The rise in leave claims is unfolding as families say child-rearing has become less affordable. President Donald Trump has pressed policies aimed at encouraging births, including expanded access to in vitro fertilization and investment accounts for newborns. The political emphasis on family growth is colliding with a different reality at home, where parents are struggling with cost pressure. Jeremy Pope, a political science professor at Brigham Young University, said Americans may not want government directing family decisions, but they do want relief from the expense of raising children.
Survey data support that point. In 2025, 7 in 10 Americans said raising children had become unaffordable, the largest single-year jump since the Brigham Young University American Family Survey began more than a decade ago. In a separate Pew Research Center survey, 84% of full-time working parents who were not self-employed said paid parental, family, or medical leave would be extremely or very helpful, yet only half said it was available to them. The gap between need and access remains wide.
Campana’s hesitation before taking leave also reflects a stubborn cultural residue. He said he felt guilty at first, as if fathers should be defined mainly by their ability to provide financially. His own father worked three jobs, a model of labor rather than presence. The newer pattern in states with paid leave points in a different direction: fathers are increasingly using policy time to show up in the newborn period, not as substitutes for mothers, but as co-parents with a direct role in early infant care.
State Data Show a Cultural Shift, Not a Finished One
California’s claim data show a major change in who is using bonding leave, but the figures do not answer every question about why. Some of the rise may reflect better program reach, more generous wage replacement, and broader normalization of caregiving by fathers. Some may reflect changes in the labor force and in which parents are eligible to take leave. And some may reflect a simple behavioral truth: when paid leave preserves income, more families use it, regardless of which parent files the claim.
What stands out is the speed of the shift. In less than a generation, a program that once drew far fewer fathers now attracts men at roughly the same rate as women in California, with even more pronounced changes in some other states. The next policy question is not whether bonding leave matters. It is whether states and employers can make it accessible enough, and well-paid enough, to reach the families who still cannot afford to use it.