Without legal equity, it’s hard to be an equitable parent.Narinder Nanu/Getty
In many countries around the world, it’s Father’s Day, a time to celebrate the contributions of dads. But aside from the inevitable barbeques and dad jokes, what does fatherhood actually look like in June 2026?
A new report, “State Of The World’s Fathers 2026” from the nonprofit research group Equimundo takes a snapshot of the life of fathers worldwide, and its findings do not suggest that the social role of the father as secondary parent has changed as much as many dads themselves would like. Researchers have found that globally, fathers want to be involved in parenting their children—but economic insecurity and cultural backlash often find them sliding back to the more uninvolved and traditional role of breadwinner.
Its findings paint a picture of parenthood all over the world defined by precarity and sacrifice—regardless of the parent’s gender. But the 5,000 fathers interviewed—in countries as diverse as Brazil, Canada, and Croatia—seem stuck between a rock and a hard place: retrograde cultural values (and a healthy dose of manosphere YouTube influencers) teach men that their greatest value in society and in a family unit lies in being a provider. But economically supporting a family is now more difficult than ever.
“We see that more fathers, and even more mothers, are reverting to traditional norms about fathers as providers and mothers as carers. This is driven both by financial pressures and systems that do not support equal parenting, and by the anti-equality backlash that is spreading around the world.”
“We see that more fathers, and even more mothers, are reverting to traditional norms about fathers as providers and mothers as carers,” the Equimundo researchers wrote. “This is driven both by financial pressures and systems that do not support equal parenting, and by the anti-equality backlash that is spreading around the world.”
In general, the modern dads surveyed said they are more involved in the care work of raising a child than their own fathers were—but they are still far less involved in parenting than mothers. One reason, researchers found, is a lack of infrastructure to explicitly support fathers. Very few countries mandate paid paternal leave, for instance, while many more legally require paid maternal leave. Thanks to the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, employers must provide up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave for the parents of newborns—but the average American father only takes 10 days off, since the US is one of the few countries where there is no requirement for employers to pay for parental leave. Mothers working full-time earn approximately 63 to 74 cents for every dollar paid to fathers, which incentivizes fathers to deprioritize spending time on the grueling tasks of raising a family. As Equimundo researchers note, “Because, in general, men still earn more than women, if leave is not adequately paid, families can often not afford for the man to take leave.”
That’s not to say that there aren’t some solutions: universal pre-K, universal parental leave, and even the greater provision of parenting resources explicitly geared toward fathers, like parenting classes and support groups. Fewer than half of the fathers Equimundo surveyed even knew such resources exist. And this lack of support can lead to hidden consequences beyond the economic realm —as New York Magazine recently reported, up to one in ten new fathers experiences depression after the birth of their child, but such challenges are rarely taken seriously.
At a January 2026 March for Life speech, Vice President JD Vance told Americans “you will find great meaning if you dedicate yourself to the creation and sustenance of human life.” Elon Musk, the noted father of at least fourteen, has also urged Americans to “have more children.” But this ascendant pronatalist movement often fails to account for the actual economic constraints parents face. The United States, in particular, boasts some of the highest parental stress levels, the priciest childcare, and the weakest paid leave laws of any peer nation.
In that context, all parents are forced to make daily sacrifices: in the Equimundo survey, nearly a quarter of all fathers worldwide reported overall poor well-being. Over a quarter had refinanced their homes to pay for childcare expenses, and three-quarters took on overtime work to do so. Nearly half took on second or third jobs to make ends meet. Nonetheless, the fathers surveyed consistently said they wanted to spend more time with their families.
In the US, even under a purportedly family-focused administration, raising a child—becoming a parent—is now harder than ever. A Surgeon General’s report in 2024 classed parental stress, in a country with only a bare-bones safety net, as a public health crisis. Other researchers have joined them in that claim—and have gone even farther.
“We find ourselves running out of adjectives to convey this level of stress,” the Equimundo researchers wrote. “We’ve called it a crisis, which it is. We’ve called out the indifference of policy makers, workplaces and others, which is still the case. Now we’re tempted to call it the willful neglect and destruction of our humanity.”
