Survey finds young men value caregiving as much as paid work

Three in 10 young men identify as caregivers, survey finds

Brigid Schulte and Haley Swenson argue in The Guardian that the 3 November midterms point away from the gender politics that followed the 2024 presidential election. When young men helped propel Donald Trump into the White House in 2024, Schulte and Swenson write, the administration “doubled down on a brand of toxic masculinity popular in the so-called manosphere,” touting high testosterone, male supremacy and a “biblically-based family” in which men work and provide while deferential women stay home to bear children and care for others.

That framing, the authors write, did not survive the next cycle. In what they describe as a complete reversal on 3 November, young men powered what they call the blue tidal wave that swept away MAGA’s hold on political power, with men 18 to 29 shifting nearly 40 points to help Democrats capture both Houses of Congress, flip seats in state legislatures and win some unexpected governorships. Schulte and Swenson say the election results made clear that young men want financial stability at a time when the cost of living is soaring and jobs have become precarious, disposable and threatened by AI — and that they also want time to give care.

The evidence comes from research Schulte and Swenson produced with NORC at the University of Chicago on men’s attitudes and experiences with care, based on a nationally representative survey of more than 3,000 Americans, with an oversample of young men 18-29. More than six in 10 young men value caregiving as much as paid work, the survey found, even though many are not yet fathers or caring for a loved one. Thirty percent of young men identify as caregivers, including 44% of young Hispanic men, who swung for Democrats by 47 points from 2024. Nearly six in 10 young men who have worked while giving care have reduced their work hours, and providing care while still earning enough to live is a major concern, according to the authors.

One respondent, a 23-year-old male caregiver from Ohio, put the squeeze this way in the survey: “Everything is so expensive these days that a young person can’t even consider taking care of someone, as they can barely take care of themselves.”

The survey also measured what young men say about fatherhood and gender roles. Eight in 10 say being an involved father is an important part of being a man, and seven in 10 say they would be at least somewhat interested in being a stay-at-home parent if they had the choice. Six in 10 young men, compared with about four in 10 young women, said they would be at least somewhat interested in being a full-time caregiver — a result the authors describe as hardly what politicians pandering with UFC fights on the White House lawn might have expected.

Schulte and Swenson report that some young men do hold traditional views. Men ages 18 to 29 are nearly three times more likely than women of the same age group to say it is OK for men to do some care work but women are better suited to do most of it — 32% versus 12% — and young men are more likely than young women to say a man’s role in the family should be providing financial support while women run the household, 32% versus 14%. The authors characterize these as minority viewpoints: more than 70% of young men say care should be divided equally between men and women, and Sixty percent said mothers and fathers do an equally good job of caring for a newborn, compared with just 52% of men over 30. The authors also report that young men are more likely than young women to say gender does not play a role in who is best suited to care for an adult.

On work policy, half of young men said they are somewhat or very likely to need paid leave from work to care for a child in the future, about the same share as young women, and 44% anticipated needing leave to care for an adult family member. Among young fathers who took paid leave to care for a child, 70% said access to paid leave through their employer or state was a major reason they took it. Men who wanted caregiving leave but did not take it most often said they could not afford it, worried their careers would suffer or found their workplaces unsupportive; just 5% said taking leave was not “manly.”

Schedules came up as a separate pressure. Nearly one-third of young men say they have no control over their work schedules, and while 33% work from home at least some of the time, 68% would prefer to — a 35-percentage-point gap between what young men have and what they want.

The authors illustrate the trade-off with one respondent, Abdul, who began caring for his chronically ill father at age 19 because no one else in his family was available and they could not afford the high cost of paying for care. Abdul missed classes, quit his job and moved in with his extended family to care for his father until his death. Now 26, Abdul told the authors: “It was always nice for me to be there for my father, because he was there for me when I was young.” He added: “I have no regrets. I would do it again.”

Schulte and Swenson write that what young men want may be what everyone wants: good work with living wages that ensure the ability to have and care for a family. Schulte is an award-winning journalist for the Washington Post and the Washington Post Magazine and was part of the team that won the 2008 Pulitzer prize, and is director of the Better Life Lab at New America; Swenson is a PhD social scientist and senior writer and researcher at New America’s Better Life Lab.

Instead of disgruntled Republicans working to thwart Democrats at every turn in the next Congress, the authors argue, policymakers would do well to raise the minimum wage, help all families cover the high cost of care, pass federal paid family and medical leave, and give workers more flexibility and control over their schedules. They write that evidence suggests young men are moving beyond toxic masculinity and the politics of division, and that if policymakers want to stay in power in 2028 and restore hope for the future, it will be up to them to deliver on what the newly elected Texas senator James Talarico calls the politics of love.