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In 2019, U.S. Rep. Colin Allred became the first member of Congress in its 232-year history to take paternity leave, at least publicly. He was off two weeks. In late March, the Texas Democrat took leave again, that time for one month after the birth of his second son. 

Between the births of his sons, a rapid evolution has taken place, altering how America views paid family leave. Cast aside as a 鈥渨oman鈥檚 issue,鈥� pushes for a federal paid leave policy in the United States have stalled for decades as every other industrialized nation has moved forward. In 2015, the United Kingdom expanded its existing paid leave policy by making up to 37 fully paid weeks available  between them as they choose. Norway has been offering leave specifically for fathers for almost 30 years, and Sweden has been doing it for 47.

Many of those programs still enforce traditional gender norms鈥擣rance recently increased its paternity leave to 28 days, yet mothers get 16 weeks鈥攂ut more countries have been moving toward gender neutral policies. Finland, for example, will begin offering almost seven months of leave to each parent,  The pregnant parent will get an additional month of pregnancy allowance.  

All the while, the United States has remained immobile until quite recently. What changed, experts said, is that men have started to buy in. 

When Allred took his first leave for the birth of his eldest son, Jordan, he was surprised by how many men reached out to him to tell him it was something they wanted to emulate. They also reached out to his wife, attorney Alexandra Eber, to express 鈥渁 feeling of relief that somebody is doing it before them.鈥�

A culture of undervaluing caretakers, typically women, has meant that paid leave was treated as an afterthought.

鈥淎 lot of them want to take that leave, and they feel pressure at work to go back too quickly or to go back even when they have a generous leave policy, to take less than their employer technically allows,鈥� Eber said. 鈥淭o have someone that has a platform saying, 鈥楾his is important, I鈥檓 going to take a real leave,鈥� creates space for them to do it, too.鈥� 

Eber also said it helped her. Already, the two divided the household chores鈥攕he cooks dinner, he vacuums and does the dishes鈥攂ut his presence early in his sons鈥� lives helped him be involved in the little things, like knowing where the extra diapers are and how the babies liked to be rocked to sleep. All of those things add up, she said, so it鈥檚 not just one parent who is expected to take the lead on care. 

When Allred took his second leave this year for the birth of his son Cameron鈥攐ne month fully off and another with some reduced hours鈥攖he landscape was different. Several other men in Congress had also taken leave, including U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, a Massachusetts Democrat who has taken two parental leaves in the past three years. (Congress doesn鈥檛 have an official paid leave policy, but members can set their own for their staff. Allred offers staff 12 weeks of paid leave).

Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian had also become a vocal advocate,  about his experience taking parental leave following the birth of his and Serena Williams鈥� daughter, Olympia, in 2017. And President Joe Biden campaigned on the promise of 12 weeks of paid leave for parents, later including it in a  aimed at working families announced in late April. 

And, of course, the pandemic left so many facets of American life irreversibly altered. Care became extremely visible for parents who worked from home, and the sheer magnitude of tasks that go into caring for young children became more apparent. (It鈥檚 not clear, however, that the division of that labor is now more equally dispersed among parents, ). 

Put together with a new wave of fathers taking it, paid leave has a new degree of visibility. 

Brad Harrington, the executive director and a research professor at the Boston College Center for Work and Family who has studied men鈥檚 use of parental leave for the past decade, said the fast clip of change in the past few years can absolutely be attributed to men taking part in the conversation. 

Women and people of other gender minorities have so often been at the center of the fight on paid parental leave鈥攖o ensure policies are both robust and use an  of family that includes LGBTQ+ couples, transgender, and nonbinary folks. A culture of undervaluing caretakers, typically women, has meant that paid leave was treated as an afterthought, an added benefit, something nice to have that would help some, but not all. 

Dismantling that falsehood has taken years. A decade ago, Harrington said no one was talking about gender-neutral parental leave. In his 2011 study of parents, only one in 20 fathers of those surveyed took more than two weeks off when their most recent child was born. About 75% took less than a week. The study surveyed fathers in four Fortune 500 companies where most earned more than $75,000.  

When he conducted the study again in 2014, most of the partner companies surveyed didn鈥檛 offer gender neutral leave. By 2019, about half of them did. In the most recent study surveying 1,400 dads in high-paying jobs, about  they took the full leave available to them鈥攖ypically six to 16 weeks. 

Setting the United States on the path of offering leave would change something fundamental about U.S. corporate culture.

What changed, Harrington said, is 鈥渢his growing appreciation that if you want working women to succeed, you better really embrace the role that men play in caregiving.鈥� The more companies that tried it, the more that followed in line. One large employer, which Harrington didn鈥檛 name specifically, added a gender-neutral paid leave policy and admitted to researchers that it assumed most men wouldn鈥檛 take it鈥攖hen most did. That altered how companies thought about the policy, too.

鈥淚f you say, 鈥極h, we want women to advance and we want to give them rapid development and we want to see them take on more responsibility,鈥� and you stop there and you don鈥檛 say anything about working dads鈥攖hen basically you鈥檙e saying we want women to have it all and to do it at all,鈥� Harrington said.  

Paid leave is a policy that promotes equity at work and at home. An inclusive and gender-neutral paid leave policy can help push to normalize broader definitions of family in other areas of policy, and help LGBTQ+ people have access to care from .  

鈥淚 don鈥檛 think there鈥檚 any policy that organizations or the government could offer that would be more conspicuously pro-gender equality than parental leave,鈥� Harrington said. 

When men are involved early in their children鈥檚 lives, it also produces benefits for partners, largely women, who are more likely to face an unofficial  when they take time off to care for children. 

It matters, Eber said, if men are taking the type of parental leave that women are typically expected to take.

鈥淲e鈥檙e all deciding together that we have to be able to take time for new children and also have a full career,鈥� Eber said.

 that would provide parents, regardless of gender, 12 weeks of paid family leave that would phase in over a decade. The leave would be on a sliding scale so that the lowest wage workers were paid up to 80% of their salaries. At minimum, workers would be reimbursed for two-thirds of their pay up to a maximum of $4,000 a month. 

Now, it鈥檚 likely that some form of that plan will make it into a  Congress is considering passing through a mechanism that would only require 50 votes in the evenly split Senate to pass. But advocates are pushing for a much faster phase-in, and say it鈥檚 unlikely a 10-year rollout will be in the final version. 

U.S. Rep. Richard Neal, the chairman of the House鈥檚 Ways and Means Committee, has proposed his own version that would go into effect in 2023 with 12 weeks of leave. Most workers would see two-thirds of their wages covered. 

Advocates are hoping to see a package that includes universal paid leave pass in the fall, said Dawn Huckelbridge, the director of Paid Leave for All, a national advocacy organization pushing for federal paid family and medical leave. 

鈥淲e are really feeling optimistic that it is going to be included in the budget resolution. It鈥檚 clearly been made a priority by Congress. We do think there is a path,鈥� she said. 

Huckelbridge stressed that the pandemic made passing such legislation鈥攁nd getting it to reach as many people as possible鈥攁ll the more important. 

鈥淭he lens that COVID also gave us is that we are more interconnected than we are willing to admit,鈥� she said. 鈥淓ven if we have paid leave, if the server at the restaurant does not, or the Amazon delivery driver does not, or the nurse in the hospital where we are being treated does not鈥攖he protections we do or not do not have impact other people and then, by extension, whole economies.鈥� 

Still, questions remain about how equalizing the policy is if it can鈥檛 offer full wages, particularly to low-wage workers who are less likely to even take leave if it means losing pay. In Harrington鈥檚 study, fathers were more likely to take leave if employers covered between 70% and 90% of their pay. 

That鈥檚 especially true for low-wage workers, where the likelihood of men taking paid leave is far less because their partners are already likely taking unpaid leave. About  in the country鈥攍argely women of color鈥攄on鈥檛 have access to any family leave at all. 

That鈥檚 been frustrating for Allred, who has tried to drum up support for paid leave policies, but hasn鈥檛 seen much appetite to discuss how a national paid leave policy would help Americans who don鈥檛 get any assistance from their employers. 

鈥淚t鈥檚 a discussion that most people don鈥檛 want to have, which is that on the lower end of the wage workforce, there鈥檚 not really the willingness to see folks in that category have this much leave,鈥� Allred said. 

It鈥檚 a concession, advocates admitted, that the policies proposed so far don鈥檛 fully cover the lowest paid Americans. Opponents of paid leave have argued it would be a significant cost to implement a program. Biden鈥檚 proposal, for instance, would cost $225 billion over a decade鈥攁nd that鈥檚 with 12 weeks and a slow phase-in. Republicans who have previously supported the measure have advocated for a tax credit structure instead. 

But advocates want to seize the moment to begin offering something, imperfect as it may be. Business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have recently come out , but with caveats, including ensuring a national law would preempt state and local policies鈥攏ine states have their own paid leave laws鈥攖o streamline requirements for companies that operate across state lines. The Biden plan doesn鈥檛 have that preemption. 

Setting the United States on the path of offering leave would change something fundamental about U.S. corporate culture, said Sherry Leiwant, co-president of A Better Balance, an organization of attorneys advocating for gender equity in the workplace. 

鈥淎t least it鈥檚 a first step in telling people, 鈥楲ook, this is something that we as a nation believe in. This is something that we as a nation are paying for. And it鈥檚 there for you to take and you鈥檙e really hurting your family if you don鈥檛 take it,鈥欌�� Leiwant said. 

This story was originally published by , and is reprinted here as part of the SoJo Exchange from , a nonprofit organization dedicated to rigorous reporting about responses to social problems.