Opinion | If This Country Won’t Listen to Moms, I’m Asking Men to Start Shouting

Christine Matthews, a pollster who surveyed voters on paid family leave, said that while most Republican voters want a pass, Republican lawmakers know that if they refuse, they will not be punished. “It’s not that Republican voters don’t support this. The politicians know that they are not voting on this particular issue, ”she said.

Neither Democrats nor Republican voters appear to be listing paid vacation as a top priority of the legislation. A 2017 poll by Pew Research found that only 35 percent of Americans list paid vacation as a top priority for President Donald Trump and Congress. A 2021 Pew poll of legislative priorities did not list paid vacation, with most Americans citing the economy and Covid as their top concerns. And according to an October CBS News / YouGov poll, only 36 percent of Americans believe the Build Back Better plan would help them and their families (33 percent say it will harm them and 31 percent say it won’t work at all to have).

The 2017 Pew survey found that paid vacation was viewed positively by businesses, not the government. However, I fear that for the majority of parents, especially working-class parents, this will never happen if we leave it to the private sector.

If we are to get large numbers of American voters to fully support government-sponsored paid vacation, we need more fathers – and men in general – to speak up. Abby McCloskey, who has served as political director for Republican and independent candidates, pointed out that while she is not an excuse for Trump, she believes his public support for family vacation has helped senior Republicans become “more ready and open” to it to become. After all, around 2 million federal employees now have 12 weeks of paid family vacation because of Trump-era policies.

Matthews believes we can increase the importance of paid vacation to men and to more conservative voters by raising new narratives. A lot of people hide these New Mama stories (which is why I’m so mad right now), but if we want to know if we can get support for this problem we should start telling stories like the one Matthews heard from the country Men when she led focus groups.

“They talk about very inflexible jobs where they have no free time to support their wife who has a baby or a serious illness or problem,” she said. Since they live far away from medical care or additional help, they feel the lack of paid vacation particularly strongly.

That doesn’t mean women should stop telling their stories. I will keep telling mine. We should go on forever because these stories are worthy on their own terms. But as a political motivation we may need a different tactic.