--- title: Most Stay at Home Dads Not There By Choice description: More dads are raising their kids full time, but that's not necessarily good news. canonical: https://time.com/2827314/most-stay-at-home-dads-not-there-by-choice/ author: Belinda Luscombe article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-06-05T16:11:18.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T08:55:25.486Z og:title: Most Stay at Home Dads Not There By Choice og:description: More dads are raising their kids full time, but that's not necessarily good news. og:url: https://time.com/2827314/most-stay-at-home-dads-not-there-by-choice/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt813e073b9d386c04/698696573bc99940051a3f0e/113908088.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 4256 og:image:height: 2394 og:image:alt: Father carrying daughter og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Most Stay at Home Dads Not There By Choice twitter:description: More dads are raising their kids full time, but that's not necessarily good news. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt813e073b9d386c04/698696573bc99940051a3f0e/113908088.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Most Stay at Home Dads Not There By Choice > Sponsored content. 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Worth Your Time is TIME's culture recommendation newsletter, edited by culture editor Eliza Berman. Each week it surfaces the books, shows, films and ideas TIME's editors think are worth your attention, and explains why. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Does TIME have a culture newsletter? Yes. Worth Your Time is TIME's culture newsletter, published weekly. #### Who writes TIME's culture recommendations? Culture editor Eliza Berman writes Worth Your Time, drawing on TIME's critics and culture desk. #### Is Worth Your Time free? Yes. It is a free newsletter available at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-worth-2026q3/newsletters?i=fa043980-e6bd-4ee0-b61f-d1a991910a8b&cr=time-nl-worth-2026q3-v1)  by [Belinda Luscombe](https://time.com/author/belinda-luscombe/)  ## Belinda Luscombe Editor at Large Jun 5, 2014 4:11 PM UTC  Father carrying daughter Father carrying daughter Lynn Koenig—Getty Images/Flickr RF  by [Belinda Luscombe](https://time.com/author/belinda-luscombe/)  ## Belinda Luscombe Editor at Large Jun 5, 2014 4:11 PM UTC There has been a sharp rise in the number of fathers staying at home with their kids in the last 25 years, but most of them are not doing it voluntarily. More than a third of full-time non-working dads are there because of illness or disability. While the at-home dad has become a popular cultural figure, the reality is a little different. A new [analysis](//www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/06/05/growing-number-of-dads-home-with-the-kids/) of Census data from the Pew Research Center has found that in 2012, only 7% of all fathers who live with their kids were at home full time. That’s about 2 million dads at home, down from 2.2 million right at the end of the recession in 2010 but up compared to the 4% in 1989. But only 21% of the dads now at home say their primary reason for staying home is to take care of their family. The biggest share of them, 35%, say their health prevents them from working, and another 23% say they’re not able to find work. The other quarter are in school or retired or home for other reasons such as working for no pay for a family business. The large numbers of dads who are home unwillingly is reflected in the economic wellbeing of those families. Almost half of all stay at home fathers live below the poverty line. A fifth of them don’t have a high school diploma. A recent Pew study found that a third of stay at home mothers lived in poverty too, but the figure among non-working dads is much higher. Fathers who’ve voluntarily eschewed a career in favor of raising their kids full time are still nowhere near the norm, but the numbers are growing. They represent 21% of all stay home dads in 2012\. In 1989 they were 5%. Even more surprisingly about half of working dads say they _would_ stay at home to look after their kids if they didn’t have to work, which is roughly the same as the number of moms who say that. But those pioneering dads still face something of an uphill battle for respect. While Pew has found that about half of the population thinks that the ideal family arrangement is to have mom home with their kids, only 8% of Americans feel that way about dads. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/2827314/most-stay-at-home-dads-not-there-by-choice/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/2827314/most-stay-at-home-dads-not-there-by-choice/"},"headline":"Most Stay at Home Dads Not There By Choice","datePublished":"2014-06-05T16:11:18.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T08:55:25.486Z","description":"More dads are raising their kids full time, but that's not necessarily good news.","url":"https://time.com/2827314/most-stay-at-home-dads-not-there-by-choice/","keywords":["Living","Parenting","Recession","Unemployment","dads","Fatherhood","Pew"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt813e073b9d386c04/698696573bc99940051a3f0e/113908088.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Belinda Luscombe","jobTitle":"Editor at Large","url":"https://time.com/author/belinda-luscombe/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt813e073b9d386c04/698696573bc99940051a3f0e/113908088.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Father carrying daughter","caption":"","creditText":"Lynn Koenig—Getty Images/Flickr RF","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/tag/time-section-living/","name":"Living"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/2827314/most-stay-at-home-dads-not-there-by-choice/","name":"Most Stay at Home Dads Not There By Choice"}}]}] ```