Welcome to our occasional round-up of policy research, reports, and essays. Perry Threlfall writes today about new work by DC think tanks and research organizations.

State of the FAMILY Act: Just in time for Mother’s Day, Eileen Appelbaum at the Center for Economic and Policy Research penned an op-ed in support of the Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act. Economist Appelbaum argues while paid vacation and sick leave is available in selected locations and those in the top quarter of the earning distribution, fewer than a quarter get paid family leave; that proportion drops below five percent in workers in the bottom quarter of the earning distribution. But, the proposed FAMILY Act (H.R.3712) would make it mandatory for employers to provide paid family and medical leave for all workers.

Sponsored by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), the legislation under consideration would provide up to 12 weeks of paid leave each year to qualifying workers for the birth or adoption of a new child, the serious illness of an immediate family member, or a worker’s own medical condition. Workers would be eligible to collect benefits equal to 66 percent of their typical monthly wages, with a capped monthly maximum amount of $1,000 per week. Comprehensive overviews of the proposed legislation are available at The National Partnership for Women and Families, The Center for American Progress, and First Focus Campaign for Children. Additionally, the Institute for Women’s Policy Research provides summaries of how access to sick days is contextualized by race and ethnicity, sexual orientation, and job characteristics here, and by geography here.

Appelbaum and Ruth Milkman’s research on the paid family leave program in California showed that the policy initiative had significantly reduced the cost of employee turnover in the lower paying job sector. The Center for Economic and Policy Research and the Center for Law and Social Policy collaboratively developed a turnover calculator that employers and human resources managers can use to calculate their own turnover costs, which would be reduced if the FAMILY Act were passed. In her op-ed, Appelbaum argued “a federal paid family and medical leave program that guarantees paid maternity leave and paid time to bond with a newborn or adopted child would be a great Mother’s Day present to America’s working families – and a gift to employers as well.”

Congressional Summary: https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/3712

Track this bill: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/114/s786

The State of Fathers: A new report released by MenCare: A Global Fatherhood Campaign, demonstrates that inequalities persist between parents, with women spending between two and 10 times longer than men caring for children around the world. The report argues there is no country in the world where men and boys share unpaid domestic and child care work equally with women and girls, despite the fact that women today comprise 40 percent of the global workforce and 50 percent of the world’s food producers. The findings also make the case that involved fatherhood makes men happier and healthier, fathers want to spend more time with their children, and an important way to ensure higher levels of involvement is to engage men early on in pre-natal visits, childbirth, and immediately after the birth of the child. This early engagement can bring lasting benefits.

Despite gender imbalances in parenting, reports show there are more stay-at-home-dads than ever before. This means the biggest increase among those caring for families in the U.S. is among fathers. Gretchen Livingston at Pew Research Center analyzed data from the IPUMS-CPS 1990 and 2013 to demonstrate changes in the proportion of fathers who are stay-at-home caregivers. Mothers remain the majority of full-time caregivers, yet fathers represent a growing share of parents fulfilling this role (up 6 percentage points since 1989). The report suggests “high unemployment rates around the time of the Great Recession contributed to the recent increases, but the biggest contributor to long-term growth in these “stay-at- home fathers” is the rising number of fathers who are at home primarily to care for their family.” Furthermore, while only five percent of full time caregiving fathers reported the reason they are not employed outside the home is to care for their children in 1989, 21 percent reported this reason in 2012. Although other reasons – such as school or retirement, being ill or disabled, or unable to find work – remain steady, more men are making the choice to be full-time caregivers.

In a related report from Pew, Kim Parker discusses the ways fatherhood in America is changing. Fewer dads are the sole providers for their families, and dual income households are now the dominant economic arrangement (at 60 percent). The roles of mothers and fathers are changing, and men have more than doubled the time they spend on caregiving activity – although women still outnumber them by a long shot. More and more fathers are reporting difficulties with work-family balance; 48 percent report they would prefer to be home and 46 percent report they spend too little time with their children.

Richard Reeves at the Brookings Institution attributes shifts in fatherhood to class differences and the feminist movement, arguing that the move towards egalitarianism within families is also being met with inequality between families. He suggests that while educated fathers are adjusting to sharing caregiving duties with their equally educated partners, poor men are slipping behind poor women in educational attainment – and are thus less and less present in the lives of their children. However, Margaret Simms at the Urban Institute pulls together evidence that foregrounds how Reeves’ perspective fails to account for high incarceration rates amongst men of color as she points to research that finds low-income men are overwhelmingly committed to seeing their children on a daily basis and providing for them financially.