 |
- Site Index |
MEET THE RESEARCHER |
WHO'S WHO IN MPRC |
ACTIVITIES |
AFFILIATIONS |
Meet Our Researchers |
||||||||
| ||||||||
Recent Scientific Accomplishments Bianchi’s research focuses on three areas: 1) Time use, particularly time allocation of parents; 2) Gender equality; and 3) Family change and variation. Bianchi, Robinson and Milkie (2006), in Changing Rhythms of American Family Life, assess time (re)allocation of parents during the 1965-2000 period. Fathers are doing more in the home and mothers have shed housework but not childcare. Parents keep time with children high by multitasking, spending more of their leisure time with children than in the past, and curtailing time with a spouse, extended family and friends. A series of Bianchi’s papers on time use in the family have appeared in the American Journal of Sociology, Demography, Journal of Marriage and Family, and Social Forces. Recently, she has begun analysis of the new American Time Use Survey (ATUS) data, including methodological work on nonresponse (Abraham, Maitland and Bianchi, forthcoming in Public Opinion Quarterly) and assessment of the comparability of child care estimates in the ATUS with historical time diary studies in the U.S. (Allard, Bianchi, Stewart, and Wight, forthcoming in the Monthly Labor Review). A second focus of her research is on gender equality. Changing Rhythms documents that weekly workloads of mothers and fathers are similar when paid and unpaid work are added together, but women’s labor market activity continues to lag men’s. The proportion of wives who out earn husbands has increased but the dominant pattern is still for wives to be the lower wage earner in dual-earner families (Raley, Mattingly and Bianchi 2006). Her 2006 Annual Review of Sociology chapter with graduate student, Sara Raley, assesses the extent to which parents?treat sons and daughters differently in the U.S. The third major focus of Bianchi’s recent work has been the assessment of family change and variation. As a member of the Generations Working Group of the EKS-NICHD “Explaining Family Change(EFC)" project, she co-organized (with Alan Booth and Nan Crouter) the October 2006 Penn State Family Symposium on caring and exchange across generations and collaborated on a chapter that synthesizes theoretical perspectives and empirical evidence on intergenerational relationships (Bianchi, Hotz, McGarry and Seltzer, forthcoming). Bianchi is collaborating with Katharine Abraham as co-investigator of the recently funded NIH R01 to increase access to the ATUS data. She is principal investigator of the Maryland subcontract and one of the original co-investigators on the EKS-NICHD EFC project that seeks to design new models for assessing family change and variation in the U.S. With funding from EKS-NICHD and the Sloan Foundation, she assisted with a major conference on work and family issues and co-edited the volume, Work, Family, Health and Well-Being (Bianchi, Casper and King 2005) from the conference. Bianchi will continue to analyze time use with the large samples of the ATUS. For example, she is beginning comparative work (with Australian time use data and researchers) on the gender division of labor, differences in the time use of employed and non-employed mothers, and variation in childcare and family activities of parents with standard and nonstandard work hours on the diary day. However, the major focus of her work over the next few years will likely be intra- and intergenerational family relationships. In collaboration with members of the Generations Working Group, she is developing a book proposal on the topic, exploring the analysis potential of the PSID and the WLS (Wisconsin Longitudinal Survey), and assessing opportunities for collaboration on new data collection on adult children and parents. | ||||||||
Maryland Population Research Center
0124N Cole Student Activities Building (#162)
College Park, MD 20742
Phone: 301-405-6403
Fax: 301-405-5743