Researcher Spotlight: Melissa Milkie

Melissa Milkie is Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto, where she has also recently completed her term as Chair of the tri-campus Graduate Department. She is both an affiliate faculty member at CGSP and a team member of the Care Economies in Context project.

Melissa’s research centers on gender, work-family conflicts, time use & mental health. She examines the changing work structures and cultural landscapes that shape well-being at work and at home. Central to her scholarship is highlighting the complexities and social factors linked to how people spend their time and experience their daily lives. Childcare has been a main focus of recent research, alongside people’s time spent in housework, paid work, and leisure.

How did you first become interested in your area of research/ dissertation topic?

Growing up with a single working mom at a time when that was rare, I was fascinated by dramatically changing gender roles and the cultural ideals and expectations we contend with. I have been long interested in the reach of cultural pressures such as those related to work-family roles and gender roles, and how those affect behavior and feelings. Over the early years of my career, I worked with great mentors who shaped my approaches. I focus on explicating what I find fascinating: how people’s objective behaviors and subjective feelings and expectations are sometimes misaligned. There have been numerous structural changes in how people live out their work and family lives and spend their time, alongside changing cultural ideals, though these go at different paces, sometimes creating stressors. Being a social psychologist, I always find it vital to look at implications of social arrangements for individual wellbeing.

What is something surprising that has emerged during your research?

A good deal of research on time spent in carework and other arenas has the potential to uncover surprises. I’ll mention three surprising findings related to time use. I was on the BBC radio show “More or Less” which checks on the accuracy of statistics out in the public realm recently. The producers asked me about a surprising finding in my research on change in mothers’ time with children, from my book Changing Rhythms of American Family Life. It showed how employed mothers in the early 2000s spent the same amount of time in childcare as homemakers did in the 1970s. Note that out in the media surprising research results are a hit – but they can get distorted. A recent Guardian podcast mentioned my surprising finding on air but distorted it so it was only about half right. The BBC producers were very happy to set the record straight — you can listen to my interview segment below, or find the complete program on the BBC website. I enjoy explaining the methods in how we measure time, and what the data show.

Second, I am working on a book about paradoxes in parents’ time use. Another time-related surprise is that leisure time, on average, has increased. How people spend their leisure time has changed significantly over the decades of course. And people feel more time pressure than in the past, though technically the average person has more time than those in earlier generations. There is a bifurcation of time with some groups being “time rich” and others – such as employed parents (especially mothers) – being “time poor.”  As we know, carework falls more heavily on women, though fathers have really narrowed the gender gap through increased childcare time and time in the company of their children.

A third surprise – but not if you use the best data like I did with recent publications using the American Time Use Survey data as well as Canadian data — was that there was more gender equality in home tasks during the pandemic than prior to it and that men’s increased time in unpaid work continued post-pandemic. Men have stepped (incrementally) up – and some fathers being remote workers has helped that because they are more available around the home for childcare and housework.

What challenges/ social problems have you encountered through your research, and what kinds of policies are required for addressing them?

There are time inequalities between groups to uncover, explain and act upon. Many of the ways we spend our time are structured by society – though this is not pointed out often enough. We can act to demand changes by governments and workplaces for higher quality lives. For example, let’s put into place the 4-day work week (at the same pay), better paid family leaves, “use it or lose it” paternal leaves, high-quality childcare in communities, and better transportation and infrastructure to make getting around town easier (saving time for people to use on higher-quality activities, as well as being better for the environment). Some things like changing school schedules across the year or day can make family life better in sync with parents’ work lives. Regulations on tech companies can help people avoid spending time on their phones and devices in ways that are detrimental to their mental health.

The city of Barcelona, Spain has been active in attempting to reduce time inequality and improve health through better time use policies! See https://timeuse.barcelona/

What do you wish the general public knew about your research, and what would you like them to do with this knowledge?

How people spend their time is clearly important for wellbeing. Some of this is under individual control and discretion – we can create quality time for ourselves and others. For example, we can choose to spend time in activities that are meaningful such as caring for others, eating meals together, and spending time with friends – which can make for a more high quality life. Parents can schedule children’s days (and their own!) to make them more healthy, for example with reasonably early bedtimes and more time out in nature. BUT this only goes so far — as noted earlier, societies structure our time, and in many ways this is unequal across groups. Also, cultural values and pressures may make it seem like we should do certain things and not others and these are not always healthy expectations. But we can collectively push back on unhealthy structures and systems that control our time.

What advice do you have for students who are interested in doing research that takes up themes that are similar to yours?

Find what is really fascinating to you where you can identify both an important social problem as well as a social scientific problem. Get as much methods and statistics training as possible because these are excellent skills that you’ll use across your career, if not directly in your own research, then in assessing other scholars’ work. I learned about textual analysis and time diary methods in my early career, as unique ways to measure social life and assess and understand people’s lives. These have had a lasting impact on my research. Also look to explain how you can extend, clarify or challenge earlier research. This language comes from the book “Seven Rules for Social Research” and students find that articulating this can be very useful in making arguments.