In May, Karlo Campana took paid time off after the birth of his son. The ad-agency worker, who has three young children under age 4, had also taken leave for his daughters.
Campana initially felt guilty about taking paternity leave, amid lingering gender stereotypes. His father had worked three jobs while Campana was growing up.
California’s paid family-leave programme began in 2004, when men made up about 18% of claim applications.
Two decades later, men accounted for 51% of bonding claims filed in California in 2025, passing mothers for the first time in the programme’s history.
The change has also appeared in Colorado and Washington, where men surpassed women in bonding-leave claims for the first time.
California gives parents up to eight weeks of paid bonding leave after a birth, adoption or foster care placement within a year. Mothers can also receive six to eight weeks of paid disability leave to recover after giving birth.
In 2025, the state increased the share of a worker’s regular salary that could be recovered during family leave to as high as 90%.
California is one of 14 states, along with Washington, D.C., that have passed legislation for paid family-leave programmes. It is among six states where family leave is fully financed through employee payroll deductions.
The financial calculation matters to parents at a time when a 2025 survey found that 7 in 10 Americans considered raising children unaffordable. The result was the largest single-year increase in that view since the survey began more than a decade earlier.
Among full-time working parents who were not self-employed, 84% said paid parental, family or medical leave would be ‘extremely or very helpful’. Only half of full-time working parents said paid leave was available to them.
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