Current Research.

I am currently engaged in a number of projects that seek to better understand and reduce family and gender inequality, with a particular emphasis on how work arrangements, cultural norms and events, and family dynamics both contribute to, and help to reduce, gender inequality. These projects focus on parental leave, work-family dynamics more generally, cultural norms surrounding fatherhood and motherhood, and how parents' divisions of labor has changed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Study on U.S. Parents' Divisions of Labor during COVID-19

This project seeks to understand how the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the ways in which parents divide domestic labor, as well as what consequences these changes have for families. This is a collaborative project with Daniel L. Carlson (University of Utah). We originally collected survey data from partnered parents in April 2020 and asked them about their experiences both before and during the pandemic. We have since collected two additional waves of data in November 2020 and October 2021. Waves 2 and 3 both consisted of follow-up surveys administered to previous panelists as well as cross-sectional surveys of new groups of parents. This study will continue for three more years, resulting in a total of 6 waves of data spanning the period from March 2020 - September 2024. Details about data for this project and studies published using these data can be found below.

*UPCOMING SYMPOSIUM*
New America, The Better Life Lab, and the Council on Contemporary Families will be hosting a symposium on the 3rd anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic on March 8, 2023 in Washington DC. This symposium will focus on the consequences of the pandemic for gender inequality and the lessons of the pandemic for how work-family policies can support gender equality in a post-pandemic society. This event will consist of a keynote address by a high-profile legislator, a presentation of the findings from the Study on US Parents’ Divisions of Labor During COVID-19 (SPDLC) led by Daniel L. Carlson and Richard J. Petts, and a panel discussion featuring a business leader, a policy activist, a government leader, and a parent.
Data Availability
With generous support from the National Science Foundation (Grant Nos. 2148610 and 2148501), each wave of data from the Study on U.S. Parents' Divisions of Labor during COVID-19 (SPDLC) will be publicly available two years after it is collected. The first two waves of data from SPDLC are now available, and can be accessed using the links below:
Publications
  • Changes in Parents' Domestic Labor During the COVID-19 Pandemic. This descriptive study (published in Sociological Inquiry; preprint available on SocArXiv) illustrates how parents' divisions of housework and childcare changed in the early months of the pandemic. Evidence shows that the shock of the pandemic both exacerbated and reduced gender inequality in domestic labor. Additional information can be found in our research brief (Council on Contemporary Families), and media coverage of the paper can be found at: NBC 10 Boston, WWJ Newsradio (Detroit), ​ABC News, ​and Wall Street Journal.
  • ​​A Gendered Pandemic: Childcare, Homeschooling, and Parents' Employment During COVID-19. This study (published in Gender, Work & Organization; preprint available on SocArXiv) examines factors that explain employment changes for mothers and fathers in the early months of the pandemic. We find that the loss of non-parental childcare and homeschooling requirements increased the risk of unemployment and reduced work hours among mothers. However, father involvement in childcare before the pandemic also buffered against negative employment outcomes for mothers. Additional information can be found in our article in Harvard Business Review.
  • U.S. Parents' Domestic Labor Over the First Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic.  This study (published in Population Research and Policy Review; preprint available on SocArXiv) uses longitudinal data over the first year of the pandemic to assess changes in parents' division of domestic labor. We find that partnered parents' divisions of housework and childcare reverted back toward more traditional arrangements by the end of 2020. Changes in parents’ divisions of domestic labor were largely driven by changes in parents’ labor force conditions, and especially by fathers’ labor force conditions. Decreases in fathers’ labor force participation and increases in telecommuting in April 2020 portended increases in partnered fathers’ shares of domestic tasks. As fathers increased time in paid work and returned to in-person work by fall, their shares of domestic labor fell. Overall, results suggest that promoting full-time employment among mothers and greater time at home for fathers are key in facilitating a more equal division of domestic labor within families post-pandemic.​

Parental Leave Policies

This project that focuses on assessing what types of parental leave policies lead to more favorable views of parental leave-taking. In order for parental leave policies to be effective and beneficial, there needs to be good policies in place but the broader culture also needs to be accepting and supportive of individuals who take leave. This project uses an experimental design to assess how various aspects of parental leave policies may affect cultural perceptions of leave-taking. Identifying what types of policies lead to more favorable views of those who take leave can help policymakers to design parental leave policies that will facilitate both greater utilization and cultural acceptance of leave-taking. This is a collaborative project with Trenton D. Mize (Purdue University) and Gayle Kaufman (Davidson College). To date, we have conducted two survey experiments approximately one year apart (2019 and 2020) and have multiple publications from this project.

Parental Leave-Taking and Perceptions of Workers as Good Parents
Objective: This study examines whether parental leave-taking affects perceptions of workers as good parents, and whether this relationship varies between mothers and fathers.
Background: Contemporary parenthood norms promote intensive parenting, but pressures to engage in intensive parenting are more pronounced for mothers than fathers. Paid parental leave policies have the potential to improve gender equality, but only if such policies help to change gendered parenting norms. We assess whether leave-taking further entrenches gendered parenting norms within workplaces or promotes greater perceptions of good parenting among fathers.
Method: We use combined data on 3333 respondents from two survey experiments in which parental leave-taking and parental gender were randomly assigned. This enables us to assess the causal effects of parental leave-taking on perceptions of mothers and fathers as good parents.
Results: Mothers and fathers in married, different-sex partnerships are more likely to be viewed as good parents when they take longer periods of leave. Also, the positive effects of leave-taking on perceptions of workers as good parents are stronger for fathers than for mothers—but only for short amounts of leave taken.
Conclusion: Greater access to, and use of, paid parental leave may enable more parents to be perceived as fulfilling contemporary parenting norms, and may especially increase the likelihood that fathers are viewed as good parents. As such, these policies may help to change gendered perceptions of parenting and promote greater gender equality.

Organizational Policies, Workplace Culture, and Perceived Job Commitment of Mothers and Fathers Who Take Parental Leave​
Americans do not always fully utilize available parental leave policies due (in part) to fear of a commitment penalty – where taking leave (or taking longer periods of leave) lowers perceptions of job commitment. Using a survey experiment (N = 1713) to identify whether organizational leave policies affect perceived job commitment, we find that leave-taking (and taking longer periods of leave) is negatively associated with perceived commitment. However, perceived commitment is higher when workers take leave under more favorable policies, and the effect of favorable policies on perceived commitment is greater for fathers than mothers. Overall, these results can help organizations design parental leave policies that increase the likelihood that workers can take needed leave without damaging their careers.
As an offshoot of the the main focus on understanding the impact of parental leave policies, this unique design enabled us to consider the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on gender attitudes. 
  • Visualizing Shifts in Gendered Parenting Attitudes during COVID-19
    • ​Many scholars have expressed fears that the 2019 coronavirus pandemic may exacerbate gender inequalities. Indeed, studies have suggested that women, and mothers in particular, have been particularly affected by reducing their participation in the paid labor market to meet increased caregiving needs. What is less clear is whether the pandemic has also shifted attitudes about mothers’ and fathers’ roles. We collected data on gendered parenting attitudes both before and during the pandemic and report shifts in attitudes in this data visualization. Consistent with fears of exacerbated gender inequality, we find a shift toward more conventional gender parenting attitudes. We also find an increase in the importance placed on mothers’ and fathers’ earning money and a decrease in the role mothers and fathers play in child development, both of which may be due to the pandemic’s effects on the economy and schooling.
Familydemic is a collaborative international project and a network of researchers from Canada, Germany, Italy, Poland, Sweden, and the United States. Its goal is to advance the theoretical explanations, methods and empirical foundations for studying the diverse immediate and long-term consequences of policy responses to the COVID-19 outbreak for the distribution of paid and unpaid work in couples and their labor market and family outcomes in diverse welfare regime contexts. Surveys were conducted in each of the 6 countries and harmonized to create a unique, cross-cultural dataset on paid and unpaid labor, work-family balance, well-being, fertility intensions and particularly on how policy responses across country contexts help to shape these outcomes during the pandemic. More information about this project can be found on the familydemic website.

A description of the project and details about a publicly available dataset associated with the project can be found below.
  • Familydemic Cross Country and Gender Dataset on work and family outcomes during COVID-19 pandemic
    • ​​Here we present the Familydemic Cross Country and Gender Dataset (FCCGD), which offers cross country and gender comparative data on work and family outcomes among parents of dependent children, before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. It covers six countries from two continents representing diverse welfare regimes as well as distinct policy reactions to the pandemic outbreak. The FCCGD was created using the first wave of a web-based international survey (Familydemic) carried out between June and September 2021, on large samples of parents (aged 20–59) living with at least one child under 12 in Canada, Germany, Italy, Poland, Sweden, and the US. While individual datasets are not available due to country-level restriction policies, the presented database allows for cross-country comparison of a wide range of employment outcomes and work arrangements, the division of diverse tasks of unpaid labour (housework and childcare) in couples, experiences with childcare and school closures due to the pandemic and subjective assessments of changes to work-life balance, career prospects and the financial situation of families (234 variables).
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