Karlo Campana is usually outnumbered these days. He has three young kids under age 4. On a recent Saturday, he played a mini game of basketball with his two older kids in their Southern California home, shooting a ball into a hoop on the door, while his baby boy watched from his bouncy chair.<\/p>\n
Campana took paid time off in May after the birth of his son \u2014 just as he did for his daughters.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou need that adjustment period,\u201d he said. Campana, who works at an ad agency, said having the time off not to think about work \u2014 or worry about losing income during that time \u2014 was crucial for him and his family during a sleep-deprived period.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy wife isn\u2019t doing it on her own,\u201d he said. \u201cShe doesn\u2019t feel like she\u2019s alone on this journey. She feels like she has support.\u201d He jokes that by kid No. 3 he thought he had nailed diaper changes without getting peed on \u2014 but he was wrong.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe benefits are I get to spend time with each of them when they were in the infant stage, the baby stage, and I get to hold them and, you know, change the poopy diapers,\u201d he said. \u201c\u200aIt\u2019s like the funny moments of, like, being a parent, like, \u2018This is it right here, you\u2019re in the thick of it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Campana is among a growing number of fathers who take leave to bond with a new child in states that offer paid family leave programs \u2014 and are part of a larger cultural shift that has seen dads handling more caregiving duties. In California \u2014 as in several other states \u2014 men make up about half of bonding claim applications<\/a>. Last year, men even surpassed women \u2014 as in Colorado and Washington<\/a> \u2014 for the first time in the state\u2019s history. This trend comes at a time when the federal government has said it wants Americans to have more babies, and families report affordability is an obstacle to raising them.<\/p>\n No federal law guarantees paid parental leave, but California is one of 14 states, plus Washington, D.C.<\/a>, that have passed legislation to enact paid family leave programs \u2014 and in many of those places, more dads are opting in.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re in a very different place in terms of our understanding of gender roles, of paternity leave, of dads\u2019 roles than we were 20-plus years ago,\u201d said Molly Weston Williamson, policy director at Paid Leave for All<\/a>, an organization that advocates for paid family leave policies.<\/p>\n California\u2019s program offers<\/a>, within a year, up to eight weeks of paid bonding leave for parents after a birth or adoption. That\u2019s on top of six to eight weeks of paid disability leave that moms get to recover after birth.<\/p>\n Research has shown that paternity leave confers benefits beyond allowing a father extra time to bond with a new child: It has positive effects on the whole family, including better health<\/a> outcomes for both parents. Paid parental leave has also been linked to lower odds of postpartum depression<\/a> and a decrease in infant mortality rates<\/a>.<\/p>\n In California, men accounted for 51% of bonding claims<\/a> filed in 2025. It\u2019s a massive shift from when the state program started in 2004, and men made up about 18% of claim<\/a> applications.<\/p>\n States fund paid family and medical leave with different combinations of employer and employee contributions; California is among six states where family leave is entirely funded by employee payroll deductions.<\/p>\n In addition to changing gender norms, Weston Williamson said, other factors likely contribute to the increase in claims by men in the state: greater awareness about the program and recent changes to the benefit.<\/p>\n In 2025, the state boosted the amount of income a worker can recoup while on family leave. Now, in California and other states, the leave benefit can be as high as 90% of their regular salary.<\/p>\n \u201cThat makes it a realistic option for a lot more families, and I think we\u2019re seeing dads and moms responding to that change,\u201d Weston Williamson said. Still, she said, there\u2019s a lot the new data about dads isn\u2019t telling us.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re getting one particular vantage point into this data, which is useful and valuable, but it\u2019s only telling us sort of part of the story, and we\u2019d need other kinds of information to better understand the full picture,\u201d Weston Williamson said. \u201cIs it that more dads are working and therefore are potentially eligible for these benefits? Is it that women are deciding not to take leave?\u201d\u200a<\/p>\n While private employers can offer their own paid leave as a benefit, this data reflects only people who took leave through the state.\u00a0<\/p>\n A spokesperson for the California Employment Development Department, which administers the state family leave program, said the department couldn\u2019t provide definitive reasons for the increase in bonding claims by men.<\/p>\n One thing is clear: The growth in these states comes as more parents are feeling strained economically. President Donald Trump has said, \u201cWe want more babies,\u201d and has promoted policy initiatives like expanding access to in vitro fertilization<\/a> and offering investment accounts <\/a>for newborns.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople really are very worried about the affordability of kids,\u201d said Jeremy Pope<\/a>, a professor of political science at Brigham Young University.<\/p>\n In 2025, 7 in 10 Americans said raising children had become unaffordable, according to the American Family Survey<\/a> out of Brigham Young University. It was the biggest single-year jump since the survey started more than a decade ago.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think they want government involved in the decision to have kids,\u201d Pope said. \u201cBut 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.\u201d<\/p>\n The Pew Research Center found in a recent survey<\/a> that among full-time working parents who are not self-employed, 84% said paid parental, family, or medical leave would be \u201cextremely or very helpful\u201d to them, but only half said it was available to them.<\/p>\n Dad-of-three Campana said he initially wasn\u2019t sure if he should take paternity leave because of lingering gender stereotypes.<\/p>\n \u201c\u200aI felt guilty, for sure,\u201d Campana said. \u201c\u200aI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Campana said that when he was growing up, his father worked three jobs. \u201cIt was hard for him to be present, and I think that\u2019s the one thing now \u2014 it\u2019s like, \u2018No, be present. Be there for your kids.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n This article is from a partnership that includes <\/em>LAist<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>NPR<\/em><\/a>, and <\/em>KFF Health News<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n KFF Health News<\/a> is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF\u2014an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n This article<\/a> first appeared on KFF Health News<\/a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Karlo Campana is usually outnumbered these days. He has three young kids under age 4. On a recent Saturday, he played a mini game of basketball with his two older kids in their Southern California home, shooting a ball into a hoop on the door, while his baby boy watched from his bouncy chair. Campana…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":16370,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16369"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16369\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}