13 Men on the Highs and Lows of the New Era of Paternity Leave

Sophia Benoit, Chris Cohen

June 14, 2024 at 10:05 a.m.·19 min read

GQ; Getty Images

Happy Father’s Day! Read all of our dad stories here.

The social—and corporate—conventions around new fatherhood are changing rapidly. More men than ever are taking time away from work in the first weeks and months of their children’s lives: between the late 2000s and the late 2010s, the share of men taking some form of leave after the birth of a child jumped from 45% to 67% (up from just 14% in the late 1970s). More white-collar workers are being granted substantial paid time off to bond with and care for their new babies. But these changes have not been evenly distributed: many new fathers don’t get any extra paid time off at all.

For Father’s Day, GQ checked in with a broad range of new dads about their experiences with paternity leave. If there was a through-line to their stories, it was the idea that spending concentrated time caring for an infant—particularly solo—was overwhelming, then manageable and confidence-boosting, in a way that shaped their relationship with their kid (and partner!) in the coming months and years. And not one father wished he spent less time with his baby.

“I was so hurt when it was over."

Henry, 46, in Palo Alto, California, has a two-year-old and another on the way.

Henry took the whole 13 weeks his employer offered. “If I had 13 weeks or 130 weeks, I was going to take as much time as I could,” he says. He took the first five weeks after his son’s birth and then when his wife went back to work, he took the next eight.

The time spent solo parenting was a challenge and a highlight. “Having the freedom to make the decisions and the schedule, to decide what we're going to eat, and how the day is going to be constructed definitely helped me a lot. I loved having all the responsibility. It was cool—hard, but cool. It really helps build confidence in everyone else around you. This is not a real problem, but there’s a lot of people who don’t have faith, for understandable reasons, that men know what the hell they’re doing,” he says. “I was so hurt when it was over. I remember thinking, ‘I will never get this time with my son again.’ And I remember in the middle of it, I was like, ‘Man, I just feel so bad for the dads don't get to do this.’”

“Lots of people could do your job—no matter how talented you think you are. But nobody can be the parent that you are to your kids.”

Pete, 42, in Traverse City, Michigan, has two-year-old twins.

Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg was just a few months into his new job—and just two years removed from his rapid ascent on the national political stage during the 2020 election—when he got the call: the adoption he had been seeking with his husband had come through. More news? It was twins, and there were some medical complications. “There were some dark moments when I wondered if the time that I had on leave was gonna be the only time that we got,” he says. “Which, I thank God is, is not how it happened.”

Beyond the difficult work of caring for a child, he says taking leave was an important leadership decision. “First, it demonstrates that the organization is healthy enough that it can operate with a temporary absence. And secondly it signals to other parents that they should do the same.” Figuring out how to delegate responsibility, and spending time with his family has shifted his perspective somewhat. “Lots of people could do your job,” he says, “no matter how talented you think you are. But nobody can be the parent that you are to your kids.”

Read Pete Buttigieg’s full interview here.

“I have a lot of PTSD from it. I needed more time, but I had to go back to work.”

Thomas, 37, in Louisville, Kentucky, has a five-year-old and a one-year-old.

Thomas took a couple of weeks of paternity leave when his first daughter was born, when he worked at an Apple store, but he wasn’t working full time, so he didn’t get full paid leave. His second daughter was born at 24 weeks via emergency C-section. It was an extremely fragile situation, and he did not get any paternity leave from the company that he was then working for (not Apple), but which he’d rather not specify.

“As you can imagine, it was a very traumatic experience,” he says. He had accumulated a couple of weeks of PTO, which he took right after her birth. His company also had a program where people could “donate” their unused PTO days to a fund for others to use in emergencies; he was able to request more time off using that.

“She was obviously in the hospital for the first few weeks, clinging to life. I have a lot of PTSD from it. And I needed more time, but I had to go back to work. I was really forced to make a choice between being there for my wife and my daughter and being able to make money for us.”

While his daughter was able to come home after a month or so, she has underdeveloped lungs and has a permanent tracheostomy and a feeding tube. She’s also prone to illness. “It’s not uncommon for us to have to go back to the hospital for a week or two. But obviously, I’ve burned through all my vacation time,” he says. Thomas eventually left that company to get more time to take care of his daughter.

“Whenever I take my daughter to a doctor's appointment by myself, people are always coming up like, ‘You're such a great dad. You’re doing such a great job,’ because, in her stroller you see her, and then a pulse oximeter and an oxygen tank and everything. I’m just doing the bare minimum; my wife’s the real warrior here.” He says that he is often the only dad at the hospital, though he doesn’t think it’s because dads don’t want to be there—it’s because they can’t afford to be.

“I’ll be honest: Half of it was kind of spiteful.”

Travis, 39, in Chico, California, has a five-year-old.

Due to a policy at the university where Travis worked, each contract had to be renewed every two years, which happened virtually automatically barring performance issues or the creation of a new budget. “My position, like everyone else's, was on a two-year contract. There was no reason at all not to extend mine. I told the people I was working with that my wife was expecting a baby. And that's when our director decided he wanted to change the department's budget and, coincidentally, cut my position.” The end date for his job was the due date for his daughter.

But the way his leave policy worked allowed him to take his leave within 60 days of the birth, and that’s how Travis ended up taking his paternity leave before his daughter was born, in the last weeks of his contract. “I’ll be honest, half of it was kind of spiteful.”

“The whole point of my leave was to be supportive and to do whatever I could to make it a two-person job after she was born,” he says. While “it was just nice to be around and get the house and the nursery ready,” he had to start a new job less than two weeks after the birth. “That part was pretty rough, just knowing that my wife was at home with the baby and I was at work; that was not fun at all.”

“Leave was always meant to be for us and our family to be here at the same time so we can raise our brand new kid,” he says. “We figured it out, but it was definitely not not the way that we would have planned it.”

“What is the difference between the ‘primary’ caregiver and the ‘secondary’?”

Levi, 40, in Westchester County, New York, has a six-year-old and a three-year-old

Levi took paternity leave for both of his kids. For his first baby, his company allotted four weeks’ leave, unless he was the “primary” parent, who would get six months. Levi took the four weeks—two when his child was born, and two after his wife returned to work, even though his wife is the primary breadwinner for their family.

“When we had our second child, it was in the middle of the pandemic. There was a lot of stress. My wife had just taken on a role that was a lot more demanding. We already had one child at that time who was getting ready to turn three,” he says. His company didn’t define what made someone “primary,” and he figured he might qualify.

“It took me inquiring with our HR and even talking to some people at the policy administrator's office and asking point-blank, ‘What is the difference between the primary caregiver and the secondary? How would you sort of differentiate?’ and they still were very sort of coy around explicitly stating anything.”

Levi, who is Black, had been with the company only for a couple of years and felt hesitant to do anything that might make him stand out at work. He worried about losing not only his job but their source of health care. So, to his wife’s consternation, he opted not to file claim to be the primary—he took four weeks.

“In hindsight, claiming that would have made sense for me,” he says. “If there’s any dynamic in parenting, it’s that you have to be ready at a moment’s notice to be the ‘primary’ parent.’”

“I'm like, ‘What can I do to make her life easier?’”

Daniel, 36, in Glen Burnie, Maryland, has a 5-year-old and a 15-year-old.

For his first daughter, Daniel didn’t have to use paternity leave because he was in grad school and was able to stay home with her every day. But with his second daughter, he got four weeks of leave. He says his employer had no issues with him taking paternity leave: “I was an hourly employee. They'll plug and chug and work around you however they can—they were not rushing me back.”

His wife was working for a startup from home, which he says was both a blessing and a curse, because while she could stay home with the baby, “the curse is that you're at home all the time, you always have the kids no matter what—whether you're at work or not.” When Daniel left to go back to work, he says his wife saw it almost as a perk that he got to get away from the kids.

He advises the dads-to-be that he knows to take as much time as possible. “That time at the beginning is so important,” he says. “If you can be there, be there as long as you can for that bonding. As hard as it is, it's the times you're going to look back on the most fondly.” He also suggests that people get very familiar with their company’s offer, because they don’t always pay your full wage or salary. “I was making maybe three fourths of what I typically made. That's not a lot of money,” he says.

“It’s definitely not vacation.”

Kevin, 37, in Chicago, has a five-year-old and a two-year-old.

Kevin took paternity leave for each of his children. For his daughter, he split his leave, taking the first four weeks and then taking another month when his wife went back to work. He’d just moved to a new office within the same company, so he couldn't take more time than that. For his son, he ended up taking five months in total. Both times he combined the 12 weeks of leave offered with vacation time. Luckily, he says, the people at his company “were excited for me. I had no pushback at all.”

“Obviously, the first month is a blur,” he says. “It’s just kind of survival mode at that point. We had a system down where I would handle all the diapers; my wife would feed and I would get the diaper and then she would try to get the baby back to bed.” With his second, he says that “it helped that we had day care to rely on during the days; that freed up a lot of time for us to just focus on the baby.” Although they did split up things like bedtimes, and they took turns taking both kids so the other could nap on weekends when possible. “It's a lot of just checking in with each other to see: ‘How are you doing? Are you really exhausted? What do you need?’ And then you have a partner there and we support each other.”

He says the times when he was on his own with his kids were particularly meaningful: “Getting out of the house can be really daunting, so feeling like I knew how to get the diaper bag ready, I knew what she needed, I can think of places to go.” That was true even when things weren’t going smoothly. “One of the first things I did when it was my solo month with my daughter was to take her outside and introduce her to grass. She screamed and cried and absolutely hated the feeling of grass—but it was just nice to try new things together.”

“It’s pretty insane—we were just making do.”

Lee, 34, in Atlanta, has a two-year-old.

Lee took paternity leave for the first two weeks after his son was born and then another month after his wife’s maternity leave was over. He had six weeks of fully paid leave and says that everyone at his work, which is a nonprofit, was very supportive.

“Those first two weeks we were both off and it was kind of all hands on deck,” he says. “It’s pretty insane—we were just making do and sharing the work as best we could.”

“After I went back to work, she was primarily taking care of him during the day, but I helped out where I could because I worked from home a decent amount.” Once her leave was over, they essentially traded places. “I was pretty much primarily responsible for him during work hours— she was mostly focused on work.” Lee admits that because the first few months with a newborn are so hard, by the third month they’d all gotten into more of a routine. “In some ways, I had it a bit easier than she did,” he says.

“There was a lot of negotiation.”

Will, 33, in Norfolk, Virginia, has a four-year-old and a one-year-old.

Although Will has taken paternity leave twice, the experiences were extremely different. He is a university professor, and when it came to taking paternity leave for his daughter in 2020, he hoped to have a similar experience to a colleague who recently had a baby and had been assigned to revamp an academic program rather than teaching classes.

“It’s a lot of work, but it’s work that can be done at home and can be done in dribs and drabs rather than a scheduled part of each day,” Will says. Unfortunately, that was not offered to him. Though his course load was reduced to two classes instead of three, he ultimately ended up teaching the entire semester. “There was a lot of negotiation for a completely different outcome than either me or my direct boss expected.”

For his second child, he and his wife both worked at different universities than before, and while the situation was similar in outcome, it ended up working smoother. His wife was able to take an entire semester off and retain some work that was especially crucial to her.

Since having their son, he and his wife have tried to split the workload as fairly as possible; for example, they make an effort to both have a workday each week where they are not in charge of the baby. But they’ve also adapted as needed to make it as fair as possible. “My wife has a much longer commute than I do, so I pick the kids up from day care because I’m the one who is home when day care gets out. I often cook dinner because I can get it cooked before she gets home.” Will knows that there are certain things, like nursing, that he could not cover. “Hopefully, I can be contributing in other ways,” he says.

“It was way unfair to her.”

Greg, 43, in Minneapolis, has a six-year-old and a two-year-old.

Greg’s company allots two months of paternity leave for newer employees and three for longer-tenured workers. “So, for my first kid I took two months, for the second kid I took three,” he says. “I did the same thing with both: I took a month when they were first born and then I split the rest up, taking two to three days a week off for an extended period of time.” He and his wife chose that because they felt it allowed him to stay on top of work.

“In retrospect, I wouldn’t do that again.” While his organization was “very respectful” of his time off, he found that it was difficult to truly shut off during the months where he was out of office two or three days a week. “When I took the first month off, everyone left me alone. I wasn’t thinking about work.” But when he came back and took a few days a week off, “It opened the window—for myself too—for less rigid boundaries.”

That often ended up frustrating his wife, who was trying to get caught back up on her own work. “It was way unfair to her,” he says. “I wish I’d just taken it all as an extended break again.”

“I just didn’t know what the hell I was doing.”

Alex, 35, who lives in Oakland, has a four-year-old and a one-year-old.

Alex took a couple of weeks of unpaid time off when each child was born, which he could afford to do, and then took two months after his wife went back to work.

He says solo parenting was overwhelming but in a productive way: “With the first kid, the first year? I just didn’t know what the hell I was doing.” But he settled in, eventually: “I don’t know if I got more confident, but I definitely feel like we got closer.” He appreciated “just getting to spend a ton of uninterrupted time together where my only focus was the kid.”

Although he suspects the bond would have formed anyway, he thinks it came faster one-on-one. “This is the only chance that you're going to get to spend uninterrupted time with your kid, where all you have to do is focus on them. And you don't you don't get that chance again.”

“A couple people were surprised that I was taking ‘that long.’”

Sam, 41, in Campbell, California, has a five-year-old.

Sam took six weeks of paternity leave. He wasn’t able to use sick leave, but he used vacation for another two weeks. “My wife had some complications, a difficult labor, so I took a week off immediately.”

He works for a university, where he says “most people were very supportive of it. But a couple people were surprised that I was taking ‘that long.’ A full two months.” Some people had questions: “What are you going to do? How are you going to feed him? How are you going to take care of him? Without the mom around, what are you going to do? Do you know what to do?”

Answers to those questions came naturally. His wife had some nerve damage from C-section and epidural complications, and she needed a walker for the first few weeks after giving birth. “I very much had to be involved because she couldn't walk around the house and carry him.”

He says taking leave, and being involved more generally, helped his relationship with his wife. “She felt very confident and comfortable with me having him so she could do things on her own. She could see friends, she could have a social life, have adult interactions without having to worry about what was happening with me and him.”

“The company I'm with now just rolled out a new paternity leave, and it’s so good that we’re like, ‘Oh, we could do this again!’”

Steve, 34, in Salisbury, Maryland, has a nine-year-old, a five-year-old, and a two-year-old.

For his first child, Steve was able to take only two weeks using his vacation time—he didn’t get any leave at all. With his middle child, he was able to take all of a week off. With his youngest, he was working fully remotely, and was offered only unpaid leave, which didn’t feel like a good idea to him or his wife. “I’ve been able to have the baby with me in my office when my wife is sleeping,” he says, “but it would be nicer if I didn't have to feel like I was multitasking between that and work.”

He says he found not being able to take time off frustrating: “It’s hard to watch my wife carry a child for nine months and then watch her push them out. She does so much work just giving birth. And she had fourth-degree tearing with our first, and I had to just go back to work.”

His current employer, whom he started with after his third child was born, has a particularly generous policy. “We intended to have one kid—two and three were accidents. Because of how everything went with paternity leave, we thought we wouldn’t have a fourth, and we still might not. But the company I'm with now just rolled out a new paternity leave, and it’s so good that we’re like, ‘Oh, we could do this again!’”

Originally Appeared on GQ

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