The best ways to make change are to make it known that a change needs to happen. We saw this throughout this chapter with more fathers “parenting” and staying at home, shifts in what families look like, more access to adoption and marriage equality, as well as through inclusive practices within and around families and parenting.

6.9.1 Resistance in Gender-Inclusive Socialization

One way social change is occurring is through non-gendered names and gender-inclusive socialization practices. We saw some pieces in this above when discussing the queering of families. The activity had you watch a video on families raising gender-neutral children and how that left the children with the option to figure themselves out with less impact from outside gender pressures. It also allows more freedom in gender expression for the youth who are raised in these spaces. More and more, we see families being open to less gendered spaces even if they are using sex assigned at birth pronouns or clothing somewhat; we hear “they can tell us when they figure it out, we will talk about all of the identity options as they grow.” This movement towards a less gendered society eases the burden on those children to fit into a box or stay in the assigned box that they were given. This could lead to a more egalitarian and less discriminatory society.

6.9.2 Family leave policies-explore legal reform

In the United States, family leave policies vary greatly and generally do not support parental leave in sustainable ways for most families. For instance, the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 provides workers in the United States with unpaid leave for caregiving and medical needs but does not address nor guarantee paid leave. Some employers may offer paid family or medical leave, which could be covered under certain insurance benefits, but offering these types of leave is not federally mandated.

Some states may require these family leave policies, but many do not. The Bureau of Labor Statistics conducted a national survey in 2021 and found that 23% of private-industry employees had access to paid family leave (i.e., parental leave and family caregiving leave), most of these being in bigger companies and those jobs that have higher incomes. 12 states currently have some type of state-paid family and medical leave programs. They also range significantly in the number of weeks allotted and the beneficiary status (Congressional Research Service, 2022). Other countries with similar development and economic conditions have these policies in place for many of their citizens.

In Sweden, stay-at-home fathers are an accepted part of the social landscape. A government policy provides subsidized time off work—480 days for families with newborns—with the option of shared paid leave between mothers and fathers. As one stay-at-home dad says, being home to take care of his baby son “is a real fatherly thing to do. I think that’s very masculine” (Associated Press 2011). Nearly 90 percent of Swedish fathers use their paternity leave (about 340,000 dads); on average, they take seven weeks per birth (The Economist, 2014). How do U.S. policies—and our society’s expected gender roles—compare? Look at this Report from Congress if you want to see how we compare.   How are Swedish children socialized to parental gender norms? How might that be different from parental gender norms in the United States?

Research on attitudes about paid leave show that while most Americans support it, older and more conservative populations are less supportive of these policies, especially regarding government funding. Those most supportive of inclusive and generous parental leave policies are women, those not working in paid labor, Black individuals, and those in dual-earner situations (Knoester and Petts, 2022). If most Americans support parental and family leave, why are we stuck with so few options?