Nearly 1 in 5 stay-at-home parents in the U.S. are dads

Alejandra O'Connell-Domenech
·2 min read

Story at a glance

  • A new Pew Research Center analysis found that close to 1 in 5 stay-at-home parents are now dads.

  • Women are still far more likely to be stay-at-home parents, but the gap between the genders is narrowing slightly.

  • The percentage of stay-at-home parents who are dads has gone up by 7 percentage points since 1989, Pew data shows.

Dads now make up 18 percent of stay-at-home parents, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis.

That number represents a seven percent increase since 1989, the center also found.

Over the past three decades, the number of stay-at-home parents has risen and fallen in the country depending on national unemployment rates.

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But overall, there are slightly fewer mothers who are choosing to be stay-at-home parents and more fathers who are staying home, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In 2021, data from those agencies showed there were 11.3 million stay-at-home parents across the country — 9.2 million stay-at-home moms and 2.1 million stay-at-home, according to a Pew spokesperson.

Comparatively, in 1989 there were about 10.3 million stay-at-home parents, comprised of 9.2 million stay-at-home moms and 1.1 million stay-at-home dads, according to a Pew spokesperson.

Pew researchers found that the reason why men and women choose to stay home and not work for pay differ.

In 2021, 79 percent of stay-at-home mothers said that they choose to do so in order to take care of the home or family, according to the analysis.

Another 9 percent said they stayed home because they were ill or disabled, and a smaller percentage said they didn’t work outside the home because they were students, retired or unable to find work.

Meanwhile, stay-at-home dads had more varied reasons for not working outside the house.

In 2021, 23 percent of dads stayed home to care for the home or family, 34 percent did not work because of illness or disability, 13 percent because they were retired, another 13 percent because they could not find work outside the home, and 8 percent because they were going to school.

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