The number of stay-at-home dads is growing in the US. It's a sign that gender roles in corporate America are more flexible than ever.

• New reports suggest that more men are dropping out of the workforce to stay at home with kids.
• The shift is due to a number of factors, including societal changes and loosening gender roles.

Some of the fathers who remained home when the pandemic hit appear to be clinging to their stay-at-home status tighter than a kid who won't share his Fruit Roll-Ups.

When the pandemic arrived, closing schools and day cares, working families across the country scrambled to look after their kids while simultaneously struggling with changes in their jobs and professional lives.

Research shows women overwhelmingly bore the brunt of childcare and household demands, but many men also stepped up. A small number even moved from working full time to caring for their kids full time; some made the switch on their own accord, others as a result of layoffs or furloughs.

Now, it seems, some of those men are staying out of the workforce. It's somewhat surprising — initially it wasn't clear whether the stay-at-home-dad movement had traction or if it was a momentary COVID blip.

But new reports suggest that some of those transitions weren't temporary. The New York Times recently noted that hundreds of thousands of men in their late 30s and early 40s dropped out of the workforce during the pandemic and have yet to return.

Citing data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Times found that roughly 89.7% of men ages 35 to 44 were working or looking for a job as of last month, down from 90.9% before the pandemic.

That this retrenchment is occurring amid a tight labor market and as wages are rising is an economic puzzle, the Times noted.

But a story from Bloomberg suggests at least a partial explanation: Citing an analysis by the Pew Research Center, Bloomberg noted that the number of stay-at-home dads expanded to about 2.1 million last year, which is equal to 18% of all stay-at-home parents, and up from 10% in 1989. The Pew study broadly defines a stay-at-home dad as any father of a child under 18 who hasn't been working, regardless of reason or marital status, and includes men in same-sex relationships.

The numbers are relatively small, but the trend is noteworthy for what it signifies, said Cary Cooper, a professor of organizational psychology at the University of Manchester in the UK. "Young millennial men are having an identity crisis," he said. "They're collectively wondering: What is my role? And what do I want?"

Cooper said that the shift is likely due to a number of factors, including societal changes and loosening gender roles. For starters, he said, many men became more involved with their families during the initial COVID lockdowns, and some discovered they quite liked it.

So they did the math with their partners and recognized that being at home with kids was a better option for their household's finances, Cooper said. "Men reflected — some saw how much they enjoyed being with their kids. Others maybe realized that their job was too stressful or not interesting or they were fed up and so they decided, 'We're going to make a different choice.'"

Of course, it's uncertain how a feared recession might scramble parents' calculus on who should work outside the home — or whether both parents will have to. For now, though, the job numbers remain stronger than many economists had forecast.

Cooper noted that while women in the US continue to earn less than men on average, they are bringing in more money than ever, making it easier for some women in opposite-sex relationships to take on the role of the breadwinner.

"For a long time women have worked, but they might not necessarily have had the career they wanted because they were constrained by their primary role in the family," he said. "But as the gender pay gap is closing, more women are saying, 'I want a career, not just a job.'"