Search results

Washington Post article focuses on extended family living situations nationally and in the District of Columbia

Awarded honorary doctorate for contributions to Social Science

Frances Goldscheider, Professor, Department of Family Science, University of Maryland

Father Involvement and the Gender Revolution

Children seem to present a barrier to the gender revolution in that parents are more likely to divide paid and domestic work along traditional gender lines than childless couples are. However, the extent to which this is so varies between countries and over time. We used data on 35 countries from the 2012 International Social Survey Programme to identify the contexts in which parents and non-parents differ the most in their division of labour. In Central/South America, Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, Asia, and South Africa, labour sharing configurations did not vary as much with the presence of children as in Australia, Western Europe, North America, and Northern Europe. Our multilevel models helped explain this pattern by showing that children seem to present a greater barrier to the gender revolution in richer and, surprisingly, more gender equal countries. However, the relationship between children and couples’ division of labour can be thought of as curvilinear, first increasing as societies progress, but then weakening if societies respond with policies that promote men’s involvement at home. In particular, having a portion of parental leave reserved for fathers reduces the extent to which children are associated with traditional labour sharing in the domestic sphere.

Sandra Hofferth and Frances Goldscheider have just published an article entitled “Family Structure and the Transition to Early Parenthood” in Demography

MPRC associates are collaborating on a component project that investigates intergenerational mechanisms through which “responsible fathering” may be transmitted.

Demography article by Kahn, Goldscheider, and Garcia-Manglano examines changing family residence patterns

Joan Kahn and Frances Goldscheider, University of Maryland; Javier Garcia-Manglano, Oxford University // Keywords : Living arrangements, financial dependency, race, marriage, unmarried parenthood, young adulthood; 2015-005

Frances Goldscheider, University of Maryland; 2014-001