By Maeve Bannister

Parents say they are outraged, angry and frustrated at systems and structures that do not support their caregiving, with advocates saying more dads need to be supported to take on roles to help achieve gender equality.

The State of the World’s Fathers 2026, a report published by gender equality organisation Equimundo, has revealed half of the world’s fathers felt unsupported by society in their bid to take on a caring role.

The report found fathers overwhelmingly wanted to be present and active in the daily lives of their children, but were held back by norms and policies that had not caught up with their intentions.

The study involved more than 8000 parents and caregivers across 16 countries, including Australia.

More than 5300 fathers, 2600 mothers and 31 non-binary or trans parents aged between 18 and 65 were surveyed.

Economic precariousness and the need for one or both parents to take on multiple jobs had knock-on effects on the mental health of both mothers and fathers, the survey found.

Alarmingly, nearly a third of men and about one in five women surveyed said they they had thought about suicide in the past two weeks.

“Those are really stark numbers that say for fathers and mothers it feels this economically bleak that you’ve thought about this possibility that the world was better off without you,” Equimundo chief executive Gary Barker told reporters on Thursday.

“That is an indictment of our dire lack of care services.”

More than 90 per cent of dads surveyed said they valued their caring responsibilities in the home as much as paid work.

But 87 per cent said they were not getting the support they needed to parent.

More than four out of five parents said their employer would not allow flexible working arrangements.

Just 39 per cent of fathers had been offered parenting support from their workplace and fewer than half knew that it existed.

The report demonstrated that care had moved from being a private crisis to a political force, Equimundo research director Taveeshi Gupta said.

“There is an underlying hum (among parents) of outrage, anger, frustration with the very representatives that were put in power to serve them,” she said.

“But we also call out workplaces as structures that need to change … paid leave is such a low-hanging fruit honestly (and) it’s remarkable that it’s not available everywhere.

“We need to ensure there’s a culture of care that gets started in the workplace that starts from the very top, it starts from the leadership.”

The 2026 State of the World’s Fathers report has been published 10 years after its first edition, and is one of the only global studies of men’s involvement in parenting and care work.