For much of our history, public systems have encountered Dad through child support enforcement, family court, custody disputes, incarceration, employment problems, or conflict with a co-parent. Far less often do systems meet him at the beginning, when he stands beside a crib, trying to figure out how to become the father his child needs.

Atlanta’s new policy doesn’t resolve every challenge working parents face. But it does place fathers inside the definition of caregiving rather than outside of it.

By Kenneth Braswell, CEO, Fathers Incorporated

Atlanta’s new 12-week caregiver leave policy recognizes something fatherhood advocates have argued for years: Fathers aren’t secondary parents, and their caregiving begins long before anyone asks where they live or what a court order says.

For more than two decades, I’ve listened to fathers describe the complicated position they can occupy inside the American family. We tell men to provide, protect, nurture, teach, attend appointments, change diapers, support their child’s mother, bond with their babies, and become emotionally available. Yet many workplaces are still structured as though becoming a father should barely interrupt the workday.

That is why Atlanta’s newly adopted parental leave policy deserves close attention from those of us who work with fathers and families. On September 21, the Atlanta City Council adopted Ordinance 26-O-1511 by a 13-0 vote. Beginning January 1, 2027, eligible city employees may receive as much as 12 weeks of paid child caregiver leave following the birth of a biological or surrogate child, legal adoption, or qualifying foster placement. The Council’s public description of the legislation also identifies expanded paid leave: 100 percent of base pay, greater scheduling flexibility, and the elimination of distinctions between primary and secondary caregivers.

The Primary vs. Secondary Caregiver Distinction

Why is Atlanta is removing the distinction between the “primary” and “secondary” caregiver? Its Paid Family Leave Study Group specifically recommended replacing a system that provided six weeks for a primary caregiver and two weeks for a nonprimary caregiver with 12 weeks available to either parent.

For fathers, language like “secondary caregiver” has never been insignificant, because words create expectations. 

When one parent is identified as “primary” and another as “secondary,” it can communicate who’s expected to know the feeding schedule, stay home when the baby is sick, learn the pediatrician’s name, notice the first fever, and rearrange work when family life interrupts the calendar. Fathers may hear the “secondary caregiver” message and retreat into the role we have historically assigned them: provider first, caregiver when necessary.

Mothers can experience the other side of that expectation, carrying responsibility by default because institutions have already decided who the primary parent is supposed to be.

And children? They don’t experience parenting through labels. They experience who comes when they cry and whose arms are familiar. They discover who feeds them, comforts them, talks to them, reads to them, and shows up repeatedly enough to become part of their sense of safety.

Legitimation and Paid Parental Leave

One Georgia-specific distinction makes Atlanta’s language especially interesting for fathers: Legitimation. Georgia law distinguishes between biological fatherhood and legal fatherhood for children born to unmarried parents. In our state, paternity identifies the biological father, while legitimation establishes the legal father-child relationship. A biological father may therefore exist without yet having obtained the legal status that comes through legitimation.

That distinction affects fathers we serve regularly at Fathers Incorporated. Legitimation can be central to a father’s ability to pursue custody or parenting time and participate fully in important decisions affecting his child. In our work, we repeatedly encounter fathers who believed that establishing paternity or appearing on a birth certificate automatically resolved every question about their legal relationship with their child, only to discover that Georgia law makes additional distinctions.

But Atlanta’s new caregiver leave ordinance is written differently.

The ordinance doesn’t say that an employee must be a “legal father” or a “legitimated father” to qualify following the birth of his child. It says that an employee who is a caregiver may receive leave in connection with the birth of a biological or surrogate child, as well as adoption or qualifying foster placement. It also requires employees to provide documentation supporting the basis for the leave. On its face, the ordinance therefore does not make a legitimation order a condition of caregiver leave following the birth of a biological child.

Unmarried fathers employed by the city should understand that distinction. A father who has not yet completed Georgia’s legitimation process should not confuse his unresolved legal status under family law with the language of this employment benefit. These are different questions. Legitimation still matters for the legal rights, responsibilities, and authority that accompany the father-child relationship. The paid-leave ordinance, however, recognizes biological parenthood in defining a qualifying birth event.

That matters because the earliest days of fatherhood should not become another place where fathers disappear because they misunderstand whether a system recognizes them.

A new father may already be trying to understand birth certificates, paternity, legitimation, child support, insurance, hospital paperwork, and his responsibilities to the mother and child. If the employment policy is unclear, he may conclude the benefit is not intended for him. Clear communication during implementation will therefore be especially relevant for unmarried biological fathers navigating both their workplace responsibilities and Georgia’s family-law system.

Separating these issues conceptually has value. A father may still need to legitimate his child. He may need to learn his legal responsibilities. He may have difficult conversations with his co-parent. None of that changes the reality that newborns can benefit from having two capable parents learning how to care for them from the beginning.

About Atlanta’s Expansion of Parental Leave

Atlanta didn’t arrive at these changes simply by adjusting a personnel manual. The City Council created a Paid Family Leave Study Group in May 2026 that brought together expertise in early childhood, maternal health, family policy, human resources, and finance. The group examined national practices and peer municipalities and considered employee retention, family needs, and implementation.

Atlanta already had history in this area. When the city adopted its previous policy in 2015, it became the first municipal government in Metro Atlanta to offer the benefit. More than a decade later, the study group revisited the policy as employment practices and understandings of caregiving continued to evolve.

The group’s recommendations went beyond increasing the number of weeks covered by the policy. Members recommended eliminating the primary-secondary caregiver distinction, creating more flexibility in scheduling leave, addressing the circumstances of parents whose babies require NICU care, and considering prenatal medical needs. The group also identified paid medical and family leave more broadly as areas deserving continued examination.

The final ordinance contains another meaningful nuance. Atlanta’s existing sick-leave provisions already address circumstances involving miscarriage, stillbirth, pregnancy-related medical conditions, and time needed to care for a child receiving NICU treatment. Because those circumstances were already covered elsewhere in city policy, the ordinance explains that separate legislative action was not necessary to place them within the new caregiver-leave provision.

As part of the parental leave expansion, Atlanta will measure implementation and utilization. This includes first-year data on how many employees use the benefit, how long they use it, and what their experiences are. That data could eventually help us understand whether fathers actually use the leave available to them, whether patterns differ across occupations and income levels, and whether workers perceive professional consequences for taking time away to parent.

Are Workplace Policies Flexible Enough for All Families?

All of this reflects something we have learned repeatedly in fatherhood work: Families don’t organize themselves in only one way.

A father may be married to his child’s mother, living with her, co-parenting from another household, adopting, becoming a foster father, or navigating a family structure that doesn’t fit neatly into traditional categories. Residence tells us where Dad sleeps. It doesn’t tell us whether he is dependable. Marriage can create legal and relational stability, but marriage itself doesn’t tell us whether a father is emotionally available. Nonresidence doesn’t automatically tell us that he is disengaged.

The question is what Dad does with the opportunity he has.

Paid leave doesn’t create responsible fatherhood by itself. A man can have 12 weeks available and still fail to be emotionally present. He can be in the house without being helpful. He can spend time near his child without learning how to care for that child. Healthy fatherhood still requires responsibility, patience, nurturing, financial contribution when applicable, healthy communication with the co-parent, and the willingness to keep showing up when parenting becomes inconvenient.

Policy can create time. Dad still has to decide what he will do with it.

Paid Family Leave at the Federal Level

The national workplace still has a complicated relationship with that opportunity. Federal law gives eligible employees of covered employers up to 12 weeks of job-protected leave for qualifying family and medical circumstances, including birth, adoption, and foster placement. But the federal Family and Medical Leave Act does not itself require that leave to be paid. The Department of Labor also makes clear that mothers and fathers have the same FMLA right to bond with a newborn.

That difference between leave and paid leave is significant: Being permitted to stay home and being financially able to stay home are not the same thing.

For fathers, that tension can be particularly complicated because men are still frequently expected to demonstrate fatherhood through financial provision. When time away from work means lost wages, we place fathers inside a cultural contradiction: 

• Be present, but keep earning. 
• Bond with your child, but don’t jeopardize the paycheck. 
• Support your co-parent, but get back to work.

Research doesn’t tell us that paid leave magically creates involved fathers, but it does suggest that time matters. Longitudinal studies in the United States have found associations between fathers taking leave after childbirth, particularly longer periods of leave, and greater participation in caregiving and developmental activities. Similar research with socioeconomically disadvantaged fathers found positive associations between leave-taking and later father engagement and responsibility. Research has also found associations between fathers’ time away from work following a birth and later co-parenting and relationship quality.

Our own work through Fathers Incorporated and the National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse has emphasized the role fathers can play during pregnancy, delivery, and postpartum recovery. Fathers can provide emotional support, participate in prenatal education, learn about pregnancy and childbirth, help with nighttime feedings, change diapers, cook, handle household responsibilities, care for older children, and pay attention to both their co-parent’s recovery and their own mental health.

So what happens when our institutions stop treating fathers as supporting characters in the lives of their children?

For much of our history, fathers have entered public systems after something has gone wrong. These systems encounter Dad through child support enforcement, family court, custody disputes, incarceration, employment problems, or conflict with a co-parent. Far less often do systems meet him at the beginning, when he stands beside a crib, trying to figure out how to become the father his child needs.

That beginning matters.

Atlanta’s new policy doesn’t resolve every challenge working parents face. It doesn’t resolve Georgia’s legitimation system. It doesn’t guarantee healthy co-parenting, strong marriages, or dependable fathers. 

But it does place fathers inside the definition of caregiving rather than outside of it.

A workplace cannot guarantee that a man will become a responsible father, but it can recognize that caregiving belongs within his definition of fatherhood. And for a father holding his newborn child while trying to understand what comes next, 12 weeks may represent something larger than time away from work.

It may be time to begin becoming the dad that child will come to know.