Fathers are more committed and involved in their families today than in previous decades, but simultaneously, fewer of them exist, according to recent data.

Dads’ involvement in the home has tripled in the past 60 years, the Institute for Family Studies (IFS) recently reported. Married dads in the 1960s spent roughly 10 hours a week assisting with childcare or home tasks. In 2024, dads dedicated 30 hours a week to the same tasks.

“Dads are helping out more at home, especially on childcare, where they are spending more time in total with their kids than any prior generation of dads,” IFS Senior Fellow Lyman Stone writes.

Fewer men are becoming dads

But only half (53%) of men ages 25 to 45 today are fathers – a 13-percentage-point drop from 1980, according to another IFS study.

“A major reason why Super Dads dominate families is that we have a lot fewer dads. Divorce and single parenthood have fallen, but marriage and fatherhood altogether are also in retreat,” IFS Fellow and University of Virginia Professor of Sociology Brad Wilcox writes in The Free Press.

Estimates predict a third of Gen-Z men will never marry and a quarter will never be dads, Wilcox reports.

“Fewer young men are becoming fathers at all – we are seeing the rise of what might be called the ‘Vanishing Father,’” IFS Fellow and Editor Grant Bailey and Wilcox write. “In fact, a big reason that today’s dads look so good is that fatherhood has become much more selective, increasingly concentrated among men with the financial resources, social capital, or cultural commitments that make family formation a possibility and a priority.”

This decline in fatherhood correlates more closely with ideology and political affiliation than with class, Bailey and Wilcox report. Men holding more liberal views have bypassed fatherhood at a rate three times higher than conservative men – a decline of 21 percentage points and seven percentage points, respectively, since 1980, according to Bailey and Wilcox. This decline in fatherhood has contributed to an increase in lonely, less motivated and less happy men.

“Indeed, there is no question that married fathers are the happiest men in America today – they are more than twice as likely to be ‘very happy’ with their lives compared to their peers who are childless and unmarried,” Bailey and Wilcox write.

Fathers steady and lead a family

Men aren’t only happier when they marry and have children. They are also better men, as Wilcox writes: “fatherhood is one of the surest paths to becoming a good man.”

Leading a family requires strength, humility and sacrifice. Men steady a household because men and women are fundamentally different, Jennifer Roback Morse, founder of The Ruth Institute, explains. Fathers tell their children “no” and support the mother’s “no” – establishing clarity and order for the children, Roback says.

“I have come to believe that the secret of what dads do is hidden in plain sight, in the open secret that men and women are different,” she writes. “The parent of each gender contributes something unique. The two parents complement one another, offsetting each other’s weaknesses and accentuating the other’s strengths.”

Fathers not only complement and balance mothers, but they also provide crucial identity and trajectory for their children, Morse writes. Dads provide strength and safety as the “first responders” in child or family emergencies.

Children learn respect as they watch their father honor their mother. A dad’s committed love is dependable, and his roughhousing and humor train children in self-control and uprightness, according to The Ruth Institute report.

When a father is absent, society struggles

But while fathers are more committed and involved at home today than ever before, 40% of all births are to unmarried women, according to data cited by the Ruth Institute. More than 18 million American children live in fatherless homes today, according to new data from the National Fatherhood Initiative and Center for Policy Research.

And the United States government – namely taxpayers – is attempting to subsidize these men’s absence. The U.S. spent more than $150 billion on 14 federal government assistance programs to support single mother households in 2018, according to data.

The results of having a father in the home are tangible, not abstract. Children without a father at home are five times more likely to live in poverty. But children with a father in the home are more likely to hit developmental milestones, earn better grades, avoid depression, drugs and jail, and earn a higher income, according to the Ruth Institute report.

“The evidence, in short, suggests that separating men from marriage and family is bad for men – and, likely, bad for the country,” Bailey and Wilcox write.