Most people say workers should get paid leave to take care of a baby, a sick family member or themselves, according to two new surveys. But they disagree on the details: who should pay, and whether it should be mandatory or optional.

The idea of a federal paid leave policy brings up issues that Americans have complicated feelings about — like government mandates for businesses and gender roles at home — according to the surveys, released Thursday by the Pew Research Center.

This ambivalence helps explain a paradox: why a policy with so much bipartisan support has nonetheless failed to be enacted. The United States is the only industrialized country that doesn’t mandate paid leave.

“There’s massive distrust of federal government mandates in the United States,” said Joan Williams, director of the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California, Hastings. “Support for paid leave is depressed by the overall hostility to government.”