The U.S. Census Bureau recently released a report analyzing the parental leave and employment trends among first-time mothers and fathers over the past half-century. Overall, there is a growing share of new fathers who are taking paid leave and an increasing share of new mothers participating in the American labor force.
The report includes information from the 2022 Survey of Income and Program Participation, which asked a nationally representative sample of parents when they had their first biological child. For the report’s analysis, these participants were grouped into cohorts based on the time period their first child was born.
According to the report, the share of fathers working during pregnancy of their first child remained stable for the cohorts whose firstborn came prior to 1981 until the 2006-2010 cohort, ranging from 76 percent to 78 percent over those three decades. By 2011 to present day, their share increased to some 81 percent. In contrast, the share of mothers working during pregnancy of their first child jumped from 38 percent for the 1981 or earlier cohort, to 53 percent for the 1981-1985 cohort. By 2022, some 78 percent of mothers worked during pregnancy of their firstborn child – roughly on par with fathers for the first time in U.S. history.
Notably, the share of fathers who took paid leave for their first child’s birth has steadily increased since 1994, while mothers’ share has remained more stable. In the 2014-2022 cohort, an estimated 50.1 percent of first-time dads and 49.1 percent of new mothers took paid leave. While the share of new fathers taking unpaid leave has steadily increased since the 1990s, first-time mothers are more likely than first-time fathers to use some type of unpaid leave (27.3 percent and 12.6 percent). Additionally, the share of fathers with a first-born child who did not take leave has plummeted from 77 percent prior to 1994 to 35 percent in the 2014-2022 cohort. For new mothers, the share of those who did not take leave remained unchanged from 1994 to 2013, with small decreases occurring in recent cohorts.
Fathers and mothers also differed on the types of leave they took within the first 12 weeks after the birth of their first child. Half of mothers and one-third of fathers took paid maternity or paternity leave during this time period. New fathers were significantly more likely than new mothers to use vacation leave (37 percent versus 7 percent) and slightly more likely to use paid sick leave (11 percent versus 8 percent).