Suzanne M. Bianchi

Suzanne M. Bianchi, PhD (Fort Dodge, Iowa, 15 April 1952 - Santa Monica, California, 4 November 2013) was an American sociologist.^[1]

Biography

Suzanne M. Bianchi was born in Fort Dodge, Iowa to Rita and Pesho Bianchi. Her mother was a housewife and her father was a meat packing plant employee.^[2] Bianchi is the oldest of six children; Michael, Mary, David, Diane, and Richard Bianchi. She also has three children named Jennifer, James, and Jonathan and a husband named Mark.^[3]After graduating valedictorian from her high school, Bianchi was the first in her family to go to college and earned her B.A. in Sociology from Creighton University, her M.A. from University of Notre Dame, and her PhD from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.^[1]

She began her career as a demographer for the U.S. Census Bureau, where she remained until 1994, then she joined the faculty at the University of Maryland, where she eventually chaired the university’s sociology department and directed the Maryland Population Research Center. In 2000 she served as President of the Population Association of America.^[4] In 2009 she moved to UCLA, where she was Dorothy L. Meier Chair in Social Equities. Among her main fields of study she focused on working mothers, researching and analyzing changes in American family life during the last decades.^[5] Bianchi also researched women's employment, how husbands and wives divide housework and time with children, and how women take care of their children and parents.^[2]

Bianchi once said, "My one concern is that I have given the impression that women have found it quite easy to balance increased labor force participation with child rearing, to reduce hours of employment so as to juggle childcare, and to get their husbands more involved in child rearing; and that fathers have found it easy to add more hours with children to those they already commit to supporting children financially. I do not think these changes have been easy for American families, particularly for American women."^[2] Bianchi is reiterating the fact that she does not think it has been easy on the mother or father to try and find more time to spend with their children with their increased work hours.

Bianchi described her research as having three phases. The first phase being, how much time people spend working for pay and how they balance that with family time. In this phase, she wrote the books "Balancing Act: Motherhood, Marriage, and Employment Among American Women" (1996) and "American Women in Transition" (1986). In the second phase, Bianchi focused on time at home, gender differences in housework and how much pressure men and women felt from the demands of work and family life. During this phase she wrote "Changing Rhythms of American Family Life" (2006) and "Continuity and Change in the American Family" (2002). The final phase of her work was on transfers of time and money between children and parents. She especially focused on when parents help adult children financially and look after grandchildren. Bianchi was writing a book when she passed away, with Judith Seltzer on child-parent relationships in adult life.^[2]

Bianchi died when she was 60 years old from pancreatic cancer. Her daughter Jennifer said of her mother, "She was very much aware of the constraints of juggling career and motherhood. She lived as well as researched it." Bianchi made many major contributions with her use of "time diaries". She was also the co-author of many books. One of her co-authors, Judith Selzer, said of her, "She always identified puzzles in the social world and tried to solve them by rigorous empirical studies."^[6]

List of Works^[7]

Bianchi made many major contributions with her use of "time diaries". She was also the co-author of many books. One of her co-authors, Judith Selzer, said of her, "She always identified puzzles in the social world and tried to solve them by rigorous empirical studies."^[6]

1. Balancing Act Motherhood Marriage and Employment Among American Women

2. American Women in Transition [The Population of the United States in the 1980s, a Census Monography Series]

3. Changing Rhythms of American Family Life

4. Household Composition and Racial Inequality

5. Work Family Health and Well-being

6. Family Disruption and Economic Hardship the Short-run Picture for Children

7. Continuity and Change in the American Family

8. Balancing Act: Motherhood, Marriage, and Employment Among American Women

9. The Changing Demographic and Socioeconomic Characteristics of Single Parent Families

10. Characteristics of Children Who Are 'Behind' in School

11. Children's progress through school: A research note

12. Is Women's Work Never Done? Gender Differences in Total Work Time in Australia and the United States. Maternal employment and time with children: Dramatic change or surprising continuity?

13. Private School Enrollment: Trends and Debates

Summary of Works

Housework: Who Did, Does or Will Do It, and How Much Does It Matter?

In this work, Bianchi continues her research on gender inequality and social change in the work and family lives in the average American home. She goes on to talk about the decline in time spent doing housework by women in 1965-2010. She found that in 2010, women do 1.6 times more housework than men, with varying numbers between married couples and married couples with children. The research also looked at how much time the woman and man spent in their jobs outside of the home. In the end, she found that what women and men want from a spouse is similar and newly married couples spend share employment and housework equally. Bianchi found that women reduced their paid work to care for their children, and men did not. Thus, going along with her gender equality claim. ^[8]

Doubling up when times are tough: A study of obligations to share a home in response to economic hardship

This study done by Bianchi looks at the attitude toward adult child and parent living together. Over half of American said the desirability to live inter-generationally depended on the existing family relationship. Bianchi and the other researchers found that support for co-residence was strongest when the adult child was single and not in a relationship. Presence of a grandchild did not affect the views of co-habitation. They also found that there was more support when the mother needed a place to live rather than the adult child.^[9]

Changing Families, Changing Workplaces

This study looks at the last half century and how paid work by women and family stability has decreased. Mothers today return to work much sooner after giving birth than they did half a century ago. Overtime work has also increased but so has income. Men who cannot find work or have lower incomes are less likely to get married. Bianchi stated, "the "work and family" problem has no one solution because it is not one problem. Some workers need more work and more money. Some need to take time off around the birth of a child without permanently derailing a fulfilling career. Others need short-term support to attend to a family health crisis. How best to meet this multiplicity of needs is the challenge of the coming decade."^[10]

Changing Rhythms of American Family Life

This book looks at how much time parents spend with their children. The book researches how men, women, and children divide their time between paid work, domestic work, childcare, and leisure. This books shows how much of an effort mothers make to spend time with their children and families, regardless of how much free time they have. Bianchi goes on to show that women are multitasking more now than in the past, in order to get the quality time they crave with their families. She also states that mothers are including their children in their leisure time in order to spend more time with them.^[11]

Awards and Leadership^[12]

1. Chair of Sociology at Maryland (2005-2009)

2. University of Maryland Distinguished Scholar-Teacher (2003-2004)

3. Former Director of the Maryland Population Research Center

4. Past-President of the Population Association of America (2000)

5. Assistant Chief for Social and Demographic Statistics in the Population Division of the U.S. Census Bureau

6. University Alumni Merit Award (2003)

7. 2002 Otis Dudley Duncan Book Award

8. Rosabeth Moss Kanter Award for Excellence in Work-Family Research (2001 and 2004)

9. Reuben Hill Award of National Council on Family Relations (NCFR) for the best article on the family (2000)

10. Lawrence R. Klein Award for an outstanding contribution to the Monthly Labor Review (1999)

See also

• Feminization of poverty
• Occupational segregation
• Time use research
• Work–family balance in the United States

References