A Pew Research Center family and medical leave survey of approximately 1,800 US working adults (March 2017) found that 59% of fathers who took time off from work after a child’s birth or adoption said they took less time than they needed or wanted. Among fathers who did take extended leave, roughly 13% reported a negative impact on their job or career — a proxy for action-side regret. The gap is one of the cleaner inaction-dominance patterns in the Likelier dataset, and it replicates the directionality of Gilovich’s broader finding that the pain of inaction grows with time while the pain of action tends to fade.
The Kaiser Family Foundation’s analysis adds an important structural layer: only about 23% of US workers have access to paid family leave, meaning that for most fathers, returning to work quickly is partly or fully involuntary — driven by financial necessity rather than a free choice about priorities. Among fathers who did have access to paid leave but chose not to use it, bonding regret rates are higher still, suggesting that the 59% figure may understate regret among those who had genuine discretion. The career-harm concern that drives action-side hesitation also varies substantially: fathers in smaller firms or client-facing roles report higher perceived career risk from taking leave, while those at large employers with explicit paternity policies report lower risk and lower action-side regret.
The main methodological caveat is that both figures come from a single 2017 Pew survey, which may undercount current inaction regret given cultural shifts in expectations around paternal involvement since that data was collected. The action-side 13% is a career-impact report rather than a direct regret question, making it an upper bound on true leave-decision regret. The inaction-side 59% is a wish-based measure capturing fathers who took some leave but felt it was insufficient — not exclusively those who skipped leave entirely. Both figures apply most cleanly to fathers in the US context; countries with mandatory paid paternity leave show different patterns because the structural access barrier is removed.