Al said goodbye to his daughters every night before he drove to work. He’d hand off childcare to his wife when she returned home from work and start his commute during dinnertime.
Al, a Connecticut-based media professional who spoke to Fast Company under a pseudonym, worked from 6:00 p.m. until 2:00 a.m. He’d go to sleep at 3:00 a.m., wake at 7:00 a.m., and get his daughters to school. Another two-hour block of sleep during the day followed by housework, afterschool childcare, then back to the office. He’s since been laid off, but all that’s changed is the amount of time he gets to spend with his girls each night.
While women are still doing the bulk of childcare, the amount that men are taking on has risen steadily. In 1965, fathers spent two and a half hours a week with their children. In 2024, fathers spent an average of nine hours a week on childcare. Meanwhile, the number of fathers who don’t work because they are the primary parent or take care of the home has risen from 4% in 1989 to 23% in 2021. Furthermore, 11% of fathers who work full-time consider themselves primary caregivers (compared to 37% of mothers).
There are several types of arrangements. Some fathers may work nights like Al, be lightly employed and shift in and out of the labor force, or work a full day in between their duties at home. They might be doing school runs and laundry between Zoom meetings, juggling freelance deadlines with playground trips, and applying to jobs during naptime. They doomscroll LinkedIn while feeding ducks at the park, or build investor decks from the sidelines of a soccer game. Some fell into the role while others were pushed, be it due to layoffs, freelance flexibility, working off-hours, or simply because their family needed them.
Each of these fathers fit the definition of a stay-at-home dad, even though few would call themselves that.
Stay-at-home economics
Some of these fathers have fallen into this role because they work less than their wives. Men are falling out of the workforce; they held almost 7 million more jobs than women in the 1990s, but as of early 2026, that gap has largely closed. Men have lost roughly 1.5 million jobs between May 2025 and April 2026, while women have gained 844,000.
Before 2019, married men put in nearly 15 more hours of paid work weekly than their wives. Between 2019 and 2024, that gap narrowed by roughly 4 hours—and three-quarters of that change came from fathers reducing their hours, not women increasing theirs. Men are working less and using more of that time at home.
The job market for many dads is shrinking as well. Three quarters of job growth in 2025 came from healthcare and social assistance work, fields dominated by women. Transportation and manufacturing—male-majority industries—shed jobs.
Al found out about his layoff through a hastily organized all-hands on a Friday morning. His employer, who had already cut his division to a skeleton crew last October, laid off the 60 remaining employees in one blow.
He didn’t have time for—nor interest in—wallowing in self-pity.
“Immediately after the meeting, I decided we were going to the zoo,” he said. “My wife asked me if I was sure I wanted to go. I said, ‘I want to go. What else am I going to do? I’m going to stay home and start drinking. It’s 10 o’clock in the morning—let’s go.’ That was the best decision I ever made.”
“My eldest figured out the layoff. She said, ‘Did Papa get fired? Yay! You get to stay home at night now.’”
Freelancing and fatherhood
Freelancing dads are also driving the change in caregiving responsibilities. As of 2024, 71% of independent contractors were men. As of July 2023, almost 7% of workers ages 25 to 54 were independent contractors as their sole or main job, and men were more likely to be independent contractors than women—8.7% versus 5.8%. In male-dominated technical fields, the gender disparity is higher. For example, roughly 88% of freelance software developers are men.
John, a marketing professional in Texas, who spoke to Fast Company on the condition of anonymity, has experienced two layoffs from full-time jobs since becoming a father. He has done the bulk of his daughters’ care since they were born, all while transitioning to freelance and fractional work from home. His wife worked full time, including weekends.
“When our daughter was born, I watched her for the first six months. We didn’t put her in daycare. I worked from home Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and I had her with me, playing on the floor while I worked,” he says. John’s role as a caregiver was more a product of circumstance than a deliberate choice. “I’ve pretty much worked from home since my firstborn was born. I don’t know any different.”
Working and caretaking full-time
Some dads who work remotely are able to be primary caregivers during the day while maintaining their jobs—whether that means working around drop-off and pick-up or by taking Zoom calls from the sidelines of their children’s soccer practices.
Leon, a New Jersey dad who works from home at a digital health company, logs in at 5:30 each morning while getting his two elementary school-aged children out the door. His wife works in education, requiring her to leave for work before their sons get dressed and ready for school. When the kids are off at school, he juggles his inbox, phone calls, dog walks, and cleaning the house.
“I will do everything that I can to fit in seven honest hours of work every day, and if I don’t, I carry it over to the weekend,” Leon says. “On the weekend, I’ll wake up at six in the morning and work until noon.”
Leon, who spoke with Fast Company under a pseudonym, feels like he’s always working, whether that’s taking his boys to practices and appointments, cleaning the house, or helming vendor meetings before school lets out.
“Ultimately, by the end of the week, I feel like I’ve done what I’ve needed to.”
The stigma of being a stay-at-home dad
Even though Leon makes sure the household is functional—with bellies fed, floors swept, kids shuttled back and forth to their obligations—he doesn’t like the title “stay-at-home dad.”
“I’m not just doing that. I’m not a parent that does not work,” he says.
The National At-Home Dad Network does embrace the term, however. Under their framework, these dads fill the bill too: They are fathers who are the daily, primary caregivers of children under 18.
Chris Griffin, the network’s president, has been a full-time stay-at-home dad since 2015. “Men identify with what we do and what we bring to our family. It’s hard for us at first to rationalize the value we bring to our family by being the primary caregiver,” he says.
One reason it’s difficult for fathers to embrace the stay-at-home dad moniker has to do with how at-home fathers are typified. Comments on playgrounds or in passing often diminish these fathers’ roles—if anyone acknowledges these dads at all.
“I would go to the playground a lot and I’d not only be the only father, but the only parent. It’d be a lot of nannies, a lot of au pairs,” Al says.
Griffin says, “I’ve met some guys in the Midwest and certain rural parts of Texas, and when they say what they do for a living and people say, ‘Wow, you babysit.’”
“Daddy’s got the girls today, huh? Yeah, I got the girls every day,” Al says.
The stigma of being a stay-at-home dad is real and documented. Among 207 fathers surveyed in one study, approximately half said they experienced it. Of that half, 70% came from interactions with stay-at-home mothers. Primary caregiving fathers experience higher levels of sadness and stress when interacting with adults other than their spouses, compared with stay-at-home mothers and working parents.
Griffin says the organization is “trying to change the narrative” on being a stay-at-home dad—and to push past stereotypes of an at-home dad being a “babysitter” or “Mr. Mom.”
“We’re both parents,” he says. “We’re both equal parts in this and raising our children for the future.”
Whether staying home was intentional, accidental, or temporary, and involves a job or not, these and other at-home dads wouldn’t change their role—even for a dream job. Most see themselves as fulfilling a role that works best for their family. They stress that they’re coequal partners with their spouses, even as they do more than most dads have for generations.
“I’m just a father who’s doing what fathers do,” Al says.
