The Paradox of Gen Z Men Wanting Kids More Than Women

57% versus 45%. That's the gap between Gen Z men and women who say they want children someday—a complete reversal of traditional expectations about who drives family formation.

Branden Estrada, an 18-year-old college freshman, has already picked out a name for his future child: Stavros, honoring his Greek heritage. "I definitely want to have kids," he told researchers. "I had such a good family life that I've always thought about what it's going to be like for me to have kids of my own."

The Great Gender Flip

A 2023Pew Research Center poll found that 57% of men between 18 and 34 said they wanted children, compared with just 45% of women in the same age group. This challenges decades of assumptions about who's more eager to start families.

"There's been this cultural understanding that it's women who are driving the desire to get married and have kids," said Daniel Cox, director of the Survey Center on American Life at the American Enterprise Institute. "But now there's a raft of polling that is suggesting that's possibly no longer the case."

The trend cuts across political lines. In a Young Men Research Project survey from May 2025, 63% of men ages 18 to 29 said having children was important to them. Republican men led at 76%, but even 58% of Democratic men agreed.

Why Women Are Hesitating

Ernest Ntangu, a 23-year-old consultant, sees the divide among his peers. His male friends typically view having kids as "a natural next step," while his female friends express "a lot more trepidation."

The hesitation isn't hard to understand. As women have entered the workforce and approached wage parity with men, the opportunity cost of taking time off for children has never been higher, explains Misty Heggeness, an economics professor at the University of Kansas and author of Swiftynomics.

"Women are looking at the state of affairs, and they're kind of saying, 'Gee, I don't know,'" Heggeness said. The concern isn't just about career sacrifices—it's about shouldering an unequal share of parenting duties while potentially having to provide emotional maintenance for a partner too.

Women still handle the majority of caregiving in American homes. And there's evidence that young men still aspire to traditional roles: when the Young Men Research Project asked what it means to be a man, "providing for your family" topped the list.

The Evolving Father Figure

Yet something is shifting in how men view fatherhood. The pandemic forced many fathers to spend more time with their children when schools and daycare centers closed—and that change has stuck. Fathers of children under 10 are now doing about 1.2 more hours of childcare per week than before Covid.

Today's young men are also more likely to take parental leave and engage in hands-on childcare than their fathers were, Heggeness notes. She points to celebrities like former NFL player Jason Kelce, who openly discusses his involvement in raising his four daughters.

Ntangu rejects the "heteronormative model" where "the father's the one that's really being the breadwinner and the mother is doing a lot of the caretaking." Instead, he envisions playing to each partner's strengths. "I love cooking," he said. "I would be perfectly comfortable with making all the meals."

Estrada shares that vision of equity. "I would really want to see what my partner needs from me," he said. "If I didn't have the job that required the most time, then I would probably take more care."

Bridging Hope and Reality

But hoping for equitable partnerships and achieving them are different things. If young men want to realize their family goals, they'll need to convince women who no longer face the same economic and social pressure to marry and procreate that their grandmothers did.

"It really requires a bunch of earnest and serious conversations," Heggeness said. "How are we going to divide all the work that's involved in growing a human and educating a human?"

Policy changes could help close the gap. Affordable childcare and paid parental leave—especially leave reserved for fathers—have shifted social norms in Scandinavian countries. Estrada is excited about prospects for universal childcare in New York City, believing such programs could help him raise a family despite economic pressures.

Economic anxiety looms large. Housing costs, especially in urban areas, worry young people like Ntangu about affording the families they want. Yet optimism persists: while only 45% of men in the Young Men Research Project survey felt financially stable, 57% believed they'd be able to afford kids soon.

"For all the discussion about this hopeless demographic," said Charlie Sabgir, the project's director, "when you actually ask about your future, there's this optimism."