Julie Brines

Ph.D. 1990, Harvard University. Gender stratification, family and household dynamics, parental issues, labor markets and employment.

Department: Sociology
Position: Associate Professor
Email: click here
Phone: (206) 685-9067
Box: 353340
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Research Summary:

Julie Brines is associate professor of sociology and associate director of the Center for Research on the Family. Her work examines family decision making; specific applications include household labor allocation, the dissolution of marital and cohabiting couples, and wives’ employment. One paper "Feminism and the Second Shift" (forthcoming, Journal of Marriage and the Family) analyzes change in men's housework for two marriage cohorts. This paper is one of the few analyses conducted over the past twenty years that uses individual-level panel (PSID) data to trace change in men's housework behavior over time. It also represents a rare attempt to estimate a fully dynamic model of housework behavior. Another paper, "The Ties that Bind" (with Kara Joyner; American Sociological Review, June 1999), is an event-history analysis of the processes leading to dissolution among married and long-term cohabiting couples. This paper tests hypotheses from theories of social exchange and distributive justice that stipulate the conditions under which partners remain in or dissolve their relationships. We find that marriages are more stable the more husbands and wives adopt a specialized division of labor, but the association is very weak. Cohabiting unions are more stable when partners make similar economic contributions and share equal power. Other work examines race and ethnic differences in women's family and employment transitions. In “Race/Ethnicity and the Employment Transitions of Married Women” (with Beth Jackson; under review), I analyze the employment transitions of newly-married Black, Latina, and White women to see if "supply side" human capital models of wives' employment can explain these transitions by race/ethnicity. The answer is a qualified 'yes' when the data are pooled, but separate analyses support predictions derived from theories of labor demand that pinpoint segregated employment opportunities by race/ethnicity and sex. A related paper (“Together and Apart”) explores differences in the timing of marital separation and divorce between African-American and White couples, and how these patterns have changed over the past three decades.

Brines, J., (Forthcoming), The Division of Household Labor, Annual Review of Sociology, Cook, K.; Massey, D., Annual Reviews Inc., Palo Alto, California.

Brines, J., (Forthcoming), "Feminism and the Second Shift" , Journal of Marriage and the Family.

Brines, J., (2006), Family and Economy, Encyclopedia of Economic Sociology, Beckert, J.; Zafirovski, M., Routledge, Ltd..

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