“We might have expected mothers to curtail the time spent caring for their children, but they do not seem to have done so,” said one of the researchers, Suzanne M. Bianchi, chairwoman of the department of sociology at the University of Maryland. “They certainly did curtail the time they spent on housework.”
The researchers found that “women still do twice as much housework and child care as men” in two-parent families. But they said that total hours of work by mothers and fathers were roughly equal, when they counted paid and unpaid work.
Using this measure, the researchers found “remarkable gender equality in total workloads,” averaging nearly 65 hours a week.
The findings are set forth in a new book, “Changing Rhythms of American Family Life,” published by the Russell Sage Foundation and the American Sociological Association. The research builds on work that Ms. Bianchi did in 16 years as a demographer at the Census Bureau.
At first, the authors say, “it seems reasonable to expect that parental investment in child-rearing would have declined” since 1965, when 60 percent of all children lived in families with a breadwinner father and a stay-at-home mother. Only about 30 percent of children now live in such families. With more mothers in paid jobs, many policy makers have assumed that parents must have less time to interact with their children.
But, the researchers say, the conventional wisdom is not borne out by the data they collected from families asked to account for their time. The researchers found, to their surprise, that married and single parents spent more time teaching, playing with and caring for their children than parents did 40 years ago.
For married mothers, the time spent on child care activities increased to an average of 12.9 hours a week in 2000, from 10.6 hours in 1965. For married fathers, the time spent on child care more than doubled, to 6.5 hours a week, from 2.6 hours. Single mothers reported spending 11.8 hours a week on child care, up from 7.5 hours in 1965.
“As the hours of paid work went up for mothers, their hours of housework declined,” said Ms. Bianchi, a former president of the Population Association of America. “It was almost a one-for-one trade.”
Meaghan O. Perlowski, a 32-year-old mother of three in Des Moines, said in an interview, “Spending time with my kids is my highest priority, but it’s a juggling act.”
Ms. Perlowski, who is a full-time pharmaceutical sales representative, said she did grocery shopping and errands on her lunch hour and cut back on housework so she would have more time with her children.
“We don’t worry much about keeping the house spotless,” she said. “It’s sometimes a mess, cluttered with school papers, backpacks and toys, but that’s O.K.”
Fathers have picked up some of the slack. Married fathers are spending more time on housework: an average of 9.7 hours a week in 2000, up from 4.4 hours in 1965. That increase was more than offset by the decline in time devoted to housework by married mothers: 19.4 hours a week in 2000, down from 34.5 hours in 1965.
When Ms. Perlowski took a business trip on Thursday, her husband, Jim, took time from work to be home with their children, ages 1, 4 and 7.
In Miami, Ian D. Abrams, a 33-year-old marketing executive, said that since his daughter was born two years ago, he had done “a substantial amount of cooking and cleaning, to take that burden off my wife,” but he admitted that home repairs were often delayed. His wife, Yolanda, took a full-time job as a state court employee when their daughter, Marley, was 14 months old.
The researchers found that many parents juggled their work and family duties by including children in their own leisure and free-time activities. Married mothers, in particular, often combine child care with other activities.
Tammy L. Curtis, 34, a schoolteacher in Glendale, Ariz., outside Phoenix, said she typically worked from 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., but always made time for her 5-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter.
“I cook less,” Ms. Curtis said. “I exercise less. And I do a lot of multitasking. When my son is at soccer practice, I sit on the sidelines grading papers. I have no time for personal relaxation.”
The book’s two other co-authors, Prof. John P. Robinson and Melissa A. Milkie, are also sociologists at the University of Maryland. Rather than relying on anecdotes and images in the mass media, the researchers used “time diaries” to measure how families spent their time. Using a standard set of questions, professional interviewers asked parents to chronicle all their activities on the day before the interview.
Katharine G. Abraham, a former commissioner of labor statistics, said the new book provided “the definitive word” on how parents allocated time between paid work and family responsibilities. The most recent numbers, for 2000, are remarkably similar to time-use data in a new survey conducted annually since 2003 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau.
Gary L. Bauer, a Christian conservative who defends traditional marriage as president of the advocacy group American Values, said the research was encouraging in one respect.
“It indicates that parents, especially mothers, instinctively know that the line promoted by social scientists in the 1960’s and 70’s — that professional child care can provide all the things that maternal care can — is not correct,” Mr. Bauer said. “Mothers made adjustments in their own lives to ensure that, even with jobs outside the home, they provide what only mothers can provide.”
The authors cited several factors to help explain how parents managed to spend more time with their children, despite working longer hours:
- Many couples delay having children to “a point later in life when they want to spend time with those children.” People who are uninterested in raising children can “opt out of parenting altogether,” by using birth control.
- Families are smaller today than in 1965, and parents are more affluent, so they can invest more time and money in each child.
- Social norms and expectations have changed, prompting parents to make “greater and greater investments in child-rearing.” As couples have fewer children, they feel “pressure to rear a perfect child.”
- Many parents feel they need to keep a closer eye on their children because of concerns about crime, school violence, child abduction and abuse.
While married mothers and married fathers were approaching “gender equality,” measured by total hours of work, the researchers found stark differences among women. These disparities suggest why working mothers often feel hurried and harried.
Over all, the researchers said, employed mothers have less free time and “far greater total workloads than stay-at-home mothers.” The workweek for an employed mother averages 71 hours, almost equally divided between paid and unpaid work, compared with a workweek averaging 52 hours for mothers who are not employed outside the home.
On average, the researchers said, employed mothers get somewhat less sleep and watch less television than mothers who are not employed, and they also spend less time with their husbands.
Wisconsin State Journal
October 16, 2006
Children of Gay Parents
http://www.madison.com/archives/read.php?ref=/wsj/2006/10/16/0610160018.php
Abbie Marie Hill has three moms and that fact, to the Madison teenager, is at once crazy and completely unremarkable.
Hill was born to a lesbian couple who later separated. Today she has a third parent, a stepmother, in her life. The 17-year-old high school junior takes a viola to youth symphony sessions and carries straight As home from Madison East.
"It's crazy and confusing but it works," Hill said of her family, which makes sense to her but isn't what some strangers expect. "In some ways it doesn't even seem like that's different."
A new wave of research confirms earlier findings that the children of gay and lesbian parents are at least as healthy and well-adjusted as comparable children of straight parents and that the differences found between these two groups of children have been modest, researchers say.
The studies, they say, undermine the argument that denying marriage and other rights to same-sex couples helps children.
Opponents of same-sex marriage counter that it's too early to be certain the research is valid and that the government has an obligation to give straight families preference over others.
Jenny Baierl, of Evansville, who supports a proposed constitutional ban on same-sex marriages and civil unions, said she does so in part out of concern for her two young boys.
Baierl, one of thousands of volunteers working to promote or oppose the proposal, has spoken at legislative hearings and squared off in a televised debate over the measure with openly gay Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Madison.
"I want to make sure my kids are raised in a society that values marriage," she said.
But for Mike Tate, head of anti-amendment group Fair Wisconsin, the proposed ban is a threat to children, because of the possibility it could go beyond the question of marriage and cost families health insurance or other benefits. "Why would we want to do something that hurts children and hurts families?"
What research says Medical establishment groups that have come out in favor of gay marriage or against bans like Wisconsin's proposed constitutional amendment include the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association and, in July, the American Academy of Pediatrics. In Wisconsin, the national pediatrics academy's state chapter and the Wisconsin Medical Society also oppose the proposed ban because of its possible effects on patients.
That doesn't convince Bill Maier, vice president and psychologist in residence at Focus on the Family in Colorado Springs, Colo.
Maier said professional groups sometimes reflect decisions by committees, not all members. Existing studies are still hampered by questions about how strong and representative their samples of human subjects are, he said.
"The evidence confirms nothing about the quality of gay parents," he said. "It's still very early to be making any conclusive statements."
The children of gay men and lesbians are more likely to behave in ways that are outside the norm for their gender and may exhibit other differences as well, Maier said, citing in part a 2001 study that he called the "most comprehensive report" on the subject. But one of that study's co-authors, New York University sociology professor Judith Stacey, said anti-gay marriage groups have misrepresented her research in a "dishonest" way.
Stacey's article - a review of 21 studies going back some 20 years - examined in part whether having two parents of the same sex influenced the development of a child's sexual orientation and behavior related to his or her gender.
Five years later, Stacey said new research, including a study that used a random, nationwide sample, shows the situation has turned out to be more complicated than she had believed.
"I have been surprised that the differences so far seem to be smaller than I would have guessed," Stacey said.
Stacey, who has always supported gay marriage, is co-authoring an update to the first article that looks at some 80 studies of gay and lesbian parents, single mothers and fathers and their children from several countries.
In the first article, Stacey's study examined potential limitations in the studies' samples of human subjects and methods. Today, there are still holes in what we know, she said, noting that many studies of same- sex parents have focused on well-to-do whites and have neglected minorities and the poor.
But she said a new wave of research is "much solider now," addressing more of those issues as well as children such as Hill, who were born into families of same-sex parents rather than to opposite-sex parents who later split up and took same-sex partners.
"The kids are fine. There's no evidence whatsoever that children of gay and lesbian parents have noticeably different outcomes on mental health," Stacey said of the findings. "They turn out at least as well.
These children may turn out somewhat better, she added. "It's not because of the sexuality but because of selection factors. It's because these are wanted children," Stacey said, noting that same-sex couples have to deliberately set out to conceive or adopt children. "When you're looking at heterosexual parenting, you have a lot of accidental" pregnancies.
Stacey's findings square with research that has shown that the social groups of parents - rich and poor, white and black - matter much less than the quality of the parents and the love and discipline they show their children, said David Riley, a human ecology professor at UW-Madison.
But Riley also noted that this research on its own can't answer the question of how people should vote on the amendment. "Most people on both sides of the debate base their arguments on civil rights and religious teachings. Behavioral science can't tell you which of those is preferable."
A busy life Abbie Marie Hill enjoys the youth group at her Unitarian congregation, plays in the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestra and muses thoughtfully about the high school where she earns high marks.
Some evenings, she goes to talks on mathematics at UW-Madison - just because she wants to - and she dreams of a career in engineering or some other math-heavy discipline.
She spends five days a week at the condominium of her biological mother, Abbie Hill, who conceived Abbie Marie through artificial insemination, and two days a week at the East Side home of Hill's former partner.
Abbie Marie said that, growing up in Madison, she's never felt like she's different. In spite of that, she said she sometimes has difficulty explaining her family to strangers.
"I have the lesbian parents, and the split household," she said, joking that some people might scratch their heads when they hear her give contradictory details about her "mom."
"They probably think my mom has multiple personalities."
Most of the time she feels like any other student. "Occasionally, I'll just think of things that people in a traditional family have and realize, 'Oh I really will never have that. Hmmm.' Usually it's just like a hmmm thing. It's not a bad thing or 'Oh I'm missing out on something,'" Abbie Marie said.
Abbie Marie's step-mother Mary Waitrovich said the teen-ager has thrived.
"Here Abbie is - she's near the top of her class," Waitrovich said.
"She's a great kid. She's a shining example of how a child who's raised by lesbians can turn out great."
Abbie Hill said she cried once when she heard a speaker at an event argue that she and other lesbians were second-rate parents.
"As a mother for me to hear that it just broke me out. It made me feel like wait a minute," she said. "I've been such a good mother. It's probably the most important thing I've ever done."
Hill's former partner, Madison firefighter Karen Hoffman, called their daughter "a gift I never thought I'd have."
But Hoffman has never been able to adopt or gain legal recognition as a parent that would guarantee custody rights to her daughter or just the right to authorize hospital treatment.
"You don't have any rights at all," Hoffman said.
Father role cited Focus on the Family's Maier acknowledged the love and effort many lesbian parents give their children but pointed to studies that he said showed children need a father.
"The two most loving lesbians in the world cannot provide a father to a little boy," Maier said. "It's not just two parents. It's having the contributions of a married mother and father."
Jenny Baierl, the Evansville mother and pro-amendment activist, said she knows from experience the challenges of having two women as parents.
Baierl was raised by her mother and grandmother after her father was killed by a drunken driver when she was 5.
Though the two women loved her, Baierl had no uncles or grandfather to fill the void her father had left, she said. That searing experience, the teachings of her Christian faith, and her marriage to her husband John, leave Baierl with a powerful certainty about the value of traditional marriage.
"I had no male role models," said Baierl, 33, who now lives in an all- male household with her husband and two young sons in Evansville. "I feel like I was really cheated."
Differences modest Stacey said the situation of a child who tragically loses a parent isn't comparable to a child who has had two same-sex parents from birth. Plus, children often have access to relatives and other adult role models of both sexes, she said.
But Stacey said her studies and training in sociology suggest that having same-sex parents can lead to modest differences in the areas of a child's gender behavior and sexual orientation.
For instance, the boys of lesbian moms in one study scored just as high on masculinity scales as boys of opposite-sex parents but also higher on femininity scales, showing a willingness to talk about feelings as well as play sports, Stacey said.
As for sexual orientation, Stacey has predicted that the children of gay and lesbian parents are likely to be more comfortable identifying with that orientation themselves, but said that so far the research hasn't proven conclusive on that.
Abbie Marie Hill, for her part, isn't dating anyone and calls herself "straight but not narrow."
Her upbringing in liberal Madison with lesbian parents leaves her less worried about her sexual orientation or who she will love, she said.
"I don't feel this need for labels or I have to be one way or the other and I have to box myself in just to fit in," Abbie Marie said. "Whatever happens, it's cool. Why spend all this time, anguished time, like searching for, you know? Why not just be?"
FATHERS IN THE MAKING
Do children of gay parents develop differently?
Times Staff Writer
October 30, 2006
Despite three decades of research on gay parenting, social scientists cannot conclusively determine whether children raised by homosexuals develop differently, for better or worse, than those raised by heterosexuals.
Though the early consensus is that they do not, even the investigators acknowledge the field is too young, the numbers too few, the variables too many and the research too values-laden to qualify as definitive.
As gay marriage and parenting have moved to the forefront of national discourse, what has emerged, some experts say, is a political debate masked as a sociological one.
In 2001, Judith Stacey and Timothy J. Biblarz, then sociologists at the University of Southern California, published a review of 21 previous studies of the children of homosexual parents (most of them lesbians). Almost uniformly, they wrote, the research found no systematic differences between children reared by a mother and father and those raised by same-sex parents.
But Stacey and Biblarz also observed that researchers who found no differences sometimes skewed their interpretation of results to suit their own leanings. "Ideological pressures," they concluded, "constrain intellectual development in this field…. Because anti-gay scholars seek evidence of harm, sympathetic researchers defensively stress its absence."
Some studies, said Stacey, have ignored or downplayed early indications there may, in fact, be differences in the development of character and gender roles, among them that children of same-sex parents may be more open to homosexual experimentation.
"I think they'll be more tolerant, more flexible in terms of gender conformity," said Stacey, who now teaches at New York University. "The boys may be less aggressive. There's some indication the girls will have a wider array of career aspirations."
Charlotte J. Patterson, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia and a prominent researcher in the field, has found that the purposefulness inherent in same-sex parenting tends to counter any societal disadvantages. "I think what we're seeing overall is pretty positive adjustment on the part of these kids," she said. "What that suggests, I think, is that we may have overrated the role of gender in parenting in our theoretical notions about these matters."
Over the last decade, that general proposition has been embraced, to varying degrees, by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Assn., the American Psychological Assn., the American Psychiatric Assn. and a variety of child welfare groups.
The psychological association holds that "the research has been remarkably consistent in showing that lesbian and gay parents are every bit as fit and capable as heterosexual parents, and their children are as psychologically healthy and well-adjusted as children reared by heterosexual parents."
The American Academy of Pediatrics, in a 2002 review of the literature, also found no negative effects. "Compared with heterosexual fathers, gay fathers have been described to adhere to stricter disciplinary guidelines, to place greater emphasis on guidance and the development of cognitive skills, and to be more involved in their children's activities," the group wrote.
Even social science articles that oppose same-sex parenting typically do not claim significant evidence of dire consequences for children.
Instead, opponents have argued that parenting by a mother and father is optimal, and that much of the existing research has been "compromised by methodological flaws and driven by political agendas," in the words of a 2005 Family Research Council report. [Editorial note by R. Hames: The Family Research Council is a evangelical, right wing, interest group founded by James Dobson president of Focus on the Family].
The report's author, Timothy J. Dailey, also said that "openly lesbian researchers" — he named Patterson specifically — "sometimes conduct research with an interest in portraying homosexual parenting in a positive light." To do so, Dailey wrote, ignores "the accumulated wisdom of cultures and societies from time immemorial, which testifies that the best way for children to be raised is by a mother and a father who are married to each other."
Both sides agree that large numbers of cases will need to be studied.
Those cases could become available in a generation or two. The 2000 Census found that 34% of female same-sex households included children under 18, an increase of 72% since 1990, and that 22% of male same-sex households included children, a quadrupling since 1990.
kevin.sack@latimes.com