Evidence from Long-term Time-use Trends

In a period of “long-term stuttering social change,” the authors argue that men are making progress toward reducing structures of gender inequality.

As women entered the paid labor force in the 1970s and 1980s, time use studies found that wives began spending less time in housework, while husbands began increasing their time (Robinson 1979). But these changes certainly did not lead to parity, and in the late 1990s and early 2000s, progress in gender equality at home and in the public sphere appeared to slow – or even stall.

We argue, however, that like most momentous historical trends, we shouldn’t expect progress towards gender equality to happen in an uninterrupted way. Just as we still see cold snaps within a process of longer-term climatic warming, the progress of gender equality should be seen as a long-term, uneven process, rather than as a single, all-at-once revolution.Just as we still see cold snaps within a process of longer-term climatic warming, the progress of gender equality should be seen as a long-term, uneven process, rather than as a single, all-at-once revolution.

When we take a broader and longer view of key trends in the gender division of labor, it is clear that despite periodic setbacks or slow-downs, there has been continuing convergence in the roles and attitudes of men and women. For this paper we studied such trends in 14 developed countries over a 50 year period, using a multinational archive of time-use diary data.

Long term changes in housework and care.

Researchers often look at the division of core housework as a measure of gender power in households. Across the 14 countries surveyed the time women spent in cleaning, cooking and laundry showed a striking downward trend over this extended period, with a less impressive, but nonetheless largely consistent, increase for men (shown in Figures 1a and 1b respectively). These graphs show that women’s hours of core housework stood at well over four hours a day (260 minutes and more) in most of those countries for which we have records from the 1960s – the USA being the exception at just under four hours (228 minutes). A rapid decline is then evident over subsequent decades to a level of below 2 ½ hours a day (150 minutes) in most countries by the first decade of the 21^st Century. The exceptions for the later period are the southern and central European countries of Italy, Spain, Austria, Slovenia and Germany, where women’s core housework hours remained at levels of at least 175 minutes a day or more. more...

Drowned out by the shocking stories in the popular media about brutal domestic violence cases, rape, spouse murders, and child abuse is a startling and well-documented trend in American life – violence among intimates is down. And the decline is not small. Between 1993 and 2010, “Intimate partner violence” fell by 64 percent.

The decline in intimate partner violence, moreover, is common to all racial and ethnic groups. In the 1994-2010 period, violence declined 61 percent among non-Hispanic whites, 62 percent among African Americans, and 78 percent among Hispanics.

This startling and under-publicized development has major implications for how we think about family and intimate partnerships in America and how we should think about family-related social policies.

The data come from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), an annual national household survey that collects self-reported data on victimization from persons 12 years of age or older, conducted by the U.S. Justice Department and the Census Bureau. The 2010 survey of intimate partner violence involved 73,300 individuals in about 41,000 households. The methodology is similar to other national-level social surveys. more...

There are two major sources for national data on rape and sexual assault: the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Uniform Crime Reporting Program. While both can be used to gauge rape trends in the U.S., they use different methodology and are best seen as complementary rather than parallel data collection systems. Both show declines in sexual violence over the past decades. more...

For many years, family researchers and working mothers have talked about “the second shift” – the extra work that employed women put in at home after their paid work day ends. And for just as long, feminist assessments of marriage have been shaped by earlier findings that when people married, the women began doing more household work, while the men started doing less.

Some research still seems to support this. Women continue to do a disproportionate amount of housework in families, despite an increase in men’s housework since the 1960s. Furthermore, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the increase in men’s housework slowed or even declined, as did several others measures of progress toward gender equity. And on average, notes Liana Sayer, director of the Maryland Time Use Laboratory, women get 30 minutes less leisure time per day than men. That gap increases to an hour when researchers adjust for employment, education, family status, and age. more...

Recent months have seen a dramatic increase in media and government attention to gender-based violence, particularly sexual assault. Unfortunately, that attention has largely focused on a relatively elite group of young women – those enrolled in 4-year colleges. Much of the discussion has focused on the prevalence of a so-called “rape culture” in such settings, characterized by widespread tolerance of sexual violence. This essay presents evidence that sexualized violence and tolerance of such violence are actually more prevalent among youths who are not enrolled in college. more...

Recent scandals about sexual assaults on college campuses have provoked vehement debates about the scope of the problem. According to the White House task force formed to investigate the issue, 20 percent of undergraduate women — 1 in 5 — are sexually assaulted while in college. But some observers claim the problem has been blown way out of proportion. For example, Christina Hoff Sommers argued in a May 2014 article in Time magazine that this number is derived from biased samples and poorly-designed survey questions. Instead, she claims, only one-in-forty college women is a victim of rape or sexual assault.

Disagreement is not confined to political debate. In a 2011 report, the Bureau of Justice Statistics acknowledged that competing estimates of sexual violence have existed for two decades without ever being definitively resolved. In this brief we evaluate existing knowledge about the incidence and prevalence of sexual victimization of women attending American colleges and universities. We follow the Bureau of Justice Statistics definition of rape as a form of sexual assault that includes forced sexual intercourse, whether by physical or psychological coercion, involving penetration by the offender(s). We include in our definition of rape any act of sexual intercourse performed on an individual who is incapacitated as a result of being comatose, drugged, or asleep. To avoid ambiguity, we do not include sexual coercion or unwanted sexual contact such as grabbing or fondling—although the latter also meets the Bureau of Justice Statistics definition of sexual assault. Comparing multiple public health surveys—including nationally representative population surveys—we find it likely that between 7 and 10 percent of women experience forcible rape in college, and that somewhere between 14 and 26 percent experience sexual assault. more...

At the end of this month, the Supreme Court will hear arguments as to whether the Constitution requires states to allow same-sex marriages and to recognize same-sex marriages allowed in other states. In the

arguments heard in the lower courts and the record-setting number of amici filed for this case, debate has often veered from whether same-sex couples should be able to marry and waded into the question of how they parent children. Social science research has been front and center in this debate, with a variety of studies examining whether families with two parents of a different sex provide better environments for raising children than two parents of the same sex.

No differences? In general, these studies have examined differences in children’s developmental outcomes to make inferences about differences in what is happening in the home, conflating how children do with the ways that people parent in same-sex and different-sex couples. The “no differences” conclusion refers to the fact that few studies have revealed significant differences in these outcomes between children raised by different-sex parents and same-sex parents. This conclusion about parenting based on data on children, however, may be biased in both directions. For example, same-sex couples are more likely to adopt “hard-to-place” children from the foster care system. They are also more likely to have children who have experienced family instability because they transitioned into new family settings after being in families headed by ‘straight’ couples. Both of these factors are known to affect children’s wellbeing, but they are not as strongly tied to parenting.

New study clarifies. In our new study in the June issue of Demography, we directly address the arguments being made about differences in parenting in two-parent families by examining parents’ actual behaviors. Using the nationally representative American Time Use Survey, we examine how much time parents in same-sex and different-sex couples spend in child-focused activities during a 24-hour period, controlling for a wide range of factors that are also associated with parenting, such as income, education, time spent at work, and the number and age of children in the family. By ‘child-focused’ time, we mean time spent engaged with children in activities that support their physical and cognitive development, like reading to them, playing with them, or helping them with their homework.

Supporting a no differences conclusion, our study finds that women and men in same-sex relationships and women in different-sex relationships do not differ in the amount of time they spend in child-focused activities (about 100 minutes a day). We did find one difference, however, as men in different-sex relationships spend only half as much child-focused time as the other three types of parents. Averaging across mothers and fathers, we determined that children with same-sex parents received an hour more of child-focused parent time a day (3.5 hours) than children in different-sex families (2.5 hours).

A key implication of our study is that the focus on whether same-sex parents provide depreciably different family contexts for healthy child development is misplaced. If anything, the results show that same-sex couples are more likely to invest time in the types of parenting behaviors that support child development. In line with a recent study that has continued to highlight that poverty—more so than family structure—is the greatest detriment to parenting practices, it’s hard not to see how delegitimizing same-sex families in ways that create both social and economic costs for them, pose a greater source of disadvantage for children.

Kate Prickett is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology and the Population Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin; Alexa Martin-Storey is a developmental psychologist and Assistant Professor at the Université de Sherbrooke, in Sherbrooke, Quebec. Their new study in Demography (with Robert Crosnoe), A Research Note on Time with Children in Different- and Same-Sex Two-Parent Families, was released today.

Pepper Schwartz’s cnn.com column, “Who enables spring break rapes?” appeared Thursday April 16, 2015. We share it here timed with release of the CCF Online Symposium on Intimate Partner Violence.

The viral video of an alleged gang rape in Panama City Beach, Florida, during spring break has everyone talking about the apparent crassness of onlookers who stood by as the alleged incident unfolded.

Predictably — and appropriately — there is a lot of hand-wringing about both crowd indifference and the rape culture that allows this kind of beastly behavior. No question, it was hideous — but, personally, I think we are all implicated. For years, we have all stood by watching as spring break has turned into an opportunity for mob behavior.

We know what can happen in fraternities and at house parties, for example, when the event gets frantic and alcohol addled brains turn primitive and predatory. We know that when adolescents and 20-somethings party, those drunken events have a high likelihood of getting hormonally heated and desire can turn dangerous. How many times have we heard of a woman passing out (or being drugged) and publicly violated? Can anyone be surprised anymore that drunken spectators lose their judgment and their moral compass?

So, when we turn a blind eye to huge drunken parties and leave beach behavior to the mob, what do we think is going to happen? A tea party?

I  am not saying that spring break turns every man into a rapist. Most men, no matter how drunk they are, do not fancy getting into a rape train that violates a comatose woman, victimized because she is passed out or otherwise rendered helpless.

But on the other hand, we know there are men who have never learned to respect women, who think that any woman who can’t protest is “fair game” and that, in that moment of drunken lust, all other rules or emotions vanish.

Why men involved in gang rape would want to wallow in another man’s semen, why they want to do this as a performance before the crowd, and why a light doesn’t shine in that only minimally intact brain to remind them that this is a felony, is something I can’t quite explain in this space.

What I do know is that we have let mobs of young people build and overpower the beaches, concerts and frat or party houses of this country and we have let partygoers become so soaked in alcohol and adrenaline that watching a gang bang becomes an interesting (and perhaps erotic) performance rather than a moment for compassion, outrage and heroism aimed at saving the victim.

My guess is that there are a lot of spectators that are massively ashamed of themselves right now — as of course, they should be. If they indeed stood by while an assault like this occurred, they have been accessory to a crime.

How about the rest of us?

We should take a good look at our own responsibility. We should demand that institutions — cities, universities, concerts venues and clubs — never let these events gather this much steam accompanied by intense alcohol consumption. We can’t monitor all social events, but there is no reason we cannot demand and enforce stricter rules about alcohol use when the events are in public spaces or in land owned by municipalities and other institutions.

We are not blameless in this horror show. But we could make it much less likely to happen if we really give a damn and do something to change the rules, and nature, of these kind of events.

Pepper Schwartz is professor of sociology at the University of Washington and the author of many books, the latest of which is “The Normal Bar.” She is the love and relationship ambassador for AARP and writes the Naked Truth column for AARP.org. She is also a senior scholar at the Council on Contemporary Families.

Our Youngest Learners: Who Are They and Where Are They Learning?

Every year since 1971, the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) has sponsored a weeklong celebration of young children, their teachers, and their families (Week of the Young Child; April 12-18, 2015). This year’s theme is Celebrating Our Youngest Learners.

1971 was a year that seemed to promise a giant leap forward for young learners. The Comprehensive Child Development Act (CCDA), an amendment to the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 (EOA) Reauthorization, would have provided every American family access to developmentally-oriented child care on a sliding-fee-scale. In September the bill was debated and passed by both the Senate and the House, and on December 2 a final version was adopted by both houses, to be sent to then-President Nixon. But on December 9 President Nixon vetoed the EOA Reauthorization and along with it the CCDA, declaring that the government would not sponsor “communal child-rearing.”

Despite the continued increase in maternal employment and decades of research showing that quality child care benefits children, families, and employers, the US has made almost no progress since the defeat of the CCDA in 1971. U.S. child care continues to falter because its policy goals are not aligned with the needs of contemporary families. One part of the system provides high quality, no-cost early education to children from low income families. The other part functions to support parental employment and is far less well-regulated.

Either way, finding affordable, convenient, and high quality child care that covers parent work schedules and meets children’s developmental needs is a real challenge for most families. Early education programs typically run for only part of the day. The cost of full-time child care rivals that of college tuition in most states. And aside from the federal standards for Head Start programs, regulation of safety, health, and quality varies widely from state-to-state.

Today’s Youngest Learners: What Distinguishes Them and Their Families?

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A report and commentary prepared for the Council on Contemporary Families.

A set of tables released by the U.S. Census this month provides new evidence of how much the structure, composition, and life-course of American families have changed over the past 55 years. Poverty figures in the same report show that having two parents may help in keeping children out of poverty, but by no means guarantee it. And other research shows that the relationship between income and family structure goes both ways: People who are well above the poverty line are more likely to get and stay married.

In 1960, according to Census figures from that year, nearly 90 percent American children lived in two-parent families, with only 8 percent in mother-only families. A miniscule 1 percent resided in father-only families, and 3 percent lived either with grandparents, other relatives, or in other arrangements (Census, 1960).

By 2014, according to figures newly released by the U.S. Census Bureau (CPS ASEC, 2015), almost a quarter of American children (24 percent) lived in a mother-only household, a 300 percent increase since 1960. Four percent lived in a father-only household, still a small percentage but a four-fold increase since 1960. Another 4 percent were living either with grandparents or in other arrangements. Just 68 percent of American children were living in two-parent families. more...