FEATURED SCHOLAR

Each month the Work and Family Researchers Network spotlights the contributions of a scholar who is making significant advances in understanding work-family concerns.  We are delighted to present the following interview with Professor Joanna Pepin.

Joanna Pepin, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology

University at Buffalo (SUNY)

United States

Experts Panel Link: https://wfrn.org/expert/joanna-r-pepin/

WFRN – How did you first get introduced to work-family issues and become a researcher in this field?

Joanna - When I began college, my plan was to become a couple and family therapist. Once enrolled in my master’s program, I was fascinated by the cultural messages people internalize about relationships. The popular culture advice was so at odds with what I was learning about healthy families. For my master’s thesis, I analyzed advice for grooms in wedding books. This was the first time I really grappled with the amount of unpaid labor women are expected to undertake.

As a therapy intern, I repeatedly encountered couples who were struggling with sharing power and carework in their relationships. Some of these challenges were mundane, even if consequential to the relationship, but some of these relationships were abusive. Incredulous that there was no treatment for abusive behavior, and finding the strategies for supporting victims wanting, I abandoned my goals of becoming a therapist and began work in the field of intimate partner violence. I was most excited by the policy work taking place, such as efforts to pass laws guaranteeing survivors reasonable work accommodations to keep themselves safe and time off to seek services related to abuse.

I eventually returned to academia to explore the spectrum of power in romantic relationships. As a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Maryland, I was fortunate to learn from the many brilliant work-family scholars there, such as Melissa Milkie, Liana Sayer, and Philip Cohen. I found myself increasingly interested in the demographic and cultural changes impacting the ways couples allocate their time and income. I was well aware of the consequences of seemingly trivial decisions on couples’ relationships and individuals’ well-being. My sociological and methodological training opened up brand new ways for me to explore these patterns.

WFRN - How did you first get involved with the WFRN?  What do you value most about the organization?

Joanna - When I started my first master’s program, my advisors were studying dual-earner couples who felt successful in balancing family and work, funded by the Sloan Work and Family Research Network, the predecessor of the WFRN. It wasn’t until I returned to academia that I got involved with the WFRN. At the encouragement of my advisor, I attended the 2014 conference. I was terrified to present our research to a room full of giants in the work-family field, but it turned out to be one of the best experiences I have ever had at a conference. The people were incredibly friendly and encouraging and the sessions were packed with fascinating, interdisciplinary research. I attended a WFRN networking dinner and thoroughly enjoyed the company and the nerdy conversation about people’s research. I left feeling like I had found my scholarly community.

WFRN - Tell us about your current research, what are you studying?

Joanna - Broadly, my research focuses on issues of equality in couples’ relationships. A lot of my research examines work and family arrangements, such as who does the housework, who works for pay, and how couples share (or don’t share) earnings and family responsibilities.

One of my current projects assesses how young people’s attitudes about work and family arrangements evolve alongside changes in their lives. More specifically, I’m using the restricted Monitoring the Future panel data to determine whether transitions in marital, parental, and work statuses throughout early adulthood are associated with changes in desired work and family arrangements. I am also exploring whether the influences of individual-level transitions are salient across cohorts. I’m eager to link these findings to health and well-being outcomes.

With collaborators at the University of Texas-Austin, I am analyzing U.S. mothers who are the primary or sole economic support for their dependent minor children. We’re using Survey of Income and Program Participation data to establish how prevalent primary-earning is among U.S. mothers, as well as identifying the precipitating events associated with this status.

WFRN - How does your research connect to social policy?

Joanna - When it comes to bringing about gender equality, a lot of critical policies to date have targeted the workplace and women’s engagement in it. A lot of progress has been made. But the stall in the gender revolution taught us that some policies are necessary but not sufficient to bring about equality in men’s and women’s divisions of paid and unpaid labor. My research, along with the work of many other scholars, suggests that policies that are gender neutral are not sufficient because they do not address underlying cultural norms.

My work in the domestic violence field taught me that the way issues are framed has a great impact on how society thinks about solutions to a social problem. One reason I’m interested in understanding people’s attitudes about work-family issues is that they provide critical information about where policies can intervene to bring about a more equal society. Going forward, social policies will need to explicitly target family life and men’s contribution to sharing the load at home. My conclusion is that policies must address both structural barriers to creating equal relationships, along with beliefs about gender. Different policies will be necessary to help all kinds of families achieve more equality in their relationships.

WFRN -  How can your research help individuals or families develop effective personal strategies?

Joanna - As the COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare, the persistent gender wage gap means couples often opt to prioritize men’s employment over women’s in times of uncertainty or when employment is scarce. And, often couples justify divisions of labor as rationally decided based on personality differences, even though the arrangements mostly align with conventional gender norms. Similar to policy efforts, I think couples who want equal partnerships have to explicitly seek strategies to bring it about, rather than passively attempting to be gender neutral in their approach. 

But, there isn’t a one-size-fits all approach for creating equal relationships. Every strategy has pros and cons. For example, I’m often asked if I think couples should have individual banking accounts or a joint, shared account. Individual accounts are important to having financial autonomy. But, joint accounts increase the lower earner’s access to money. So, the answer depends on the needs of the couple. What is most important at one time in a relationship may change, so couples should regularly evaluate their strategies and goals as people and lives change. If there is any common thread among the most equal couples, it’s that they tend to report that they both feel like their partner is doing more than their fair share, so each partner works hard to match their partner’s contribution.

WFRN - What advice would you give to graduate students or those early in their professional careers?

Joanna - I read an article a number of years ago advocating that people eschew the mentor/apprentice approach for advancing their careers. Instead, the author advocated for creating a personal board of directors. I thought this was stellar advice. It’s rarely a good plan to get all your needs met from one’s romantic partner. Relying solely on one mentor is also risky. People are experts in many different things, but no one is an expert in everything. So, my strong encouragement is for people to seek out many types of mentors: senior people within and outside your department, people who are only a year or two ahead of your career stage, peers, and friends outside of your department and discipline.

My second piece of advice is to work to time, not to task. Meaning, set priorities for your work, but with rare exceptions, it’s usually more productive and less stress inducing to meet daily or weekly time goals. Tasks always take longer than expected and I found that working until I felt something was finished quickly led to feeling burnt out. But, regular amounts of time spent on a project still leads to the same level of productivity and it’s a lot less stressful.

My final suggestion is to not compare your journey to anyone else’s journey. We all have our own set of circumstances, goals, strengths, hurdles, and resources. Comparisons are mostly a fallacy anyway. Instead, find an approach that works for you. Seek out people who are joyful in their work, amplify the good work of others, and graciously pay forward encouragement and support.

WFRN - How do you integrate work-family topics in your teaching and training? 

Joanna - In my undergraduate family sociology class, I use Philip Cohen’s textbook, The Family: Diversity, Inequality and Social Change. I like this textbook because it teaches students to consider family dynamics in the context of the market and the state. Toward the end of the semester, I ask students to complete a “Fact Check” assignment, examining a claim they find in a news article. To prime students to complete the assignment, they read a report from the Family Story Project about inaccurate and biased language against Black families and they watch a video by Quartz about the history of misleading statistics fueling the "mommy wars."

What I like about this assignment is that it teaches students to evaluate the source and goal of commentary about families, the evidence used to support claims, as well as the source of the article. I want students to exit my class as more informed citizens about the societal debates on how best to support families and to feel equipped to evaluate policies at a deeper level than reading political talking points or passively consuming social media memes.

ABOUT THE WFRN

The Work and Family Researchers Network’s mission is to facilitate virtual and face-to-face interaction among academic work and family researchers from a broad range of fields as well as engage the next generation of work and family scholars. The WFRN welcomes the participation of policy makers and workplace practitioners as it seeks to promote knowledge and understanding of work and family issues among the community of global stakeholders. 

During 2021, the WFRN will host a series of virtual conference events.  We look forward to our next in-person conference June 23-25, 2022 in New York City.

To learn more about the WFRN, please visit our website WFRN.ORG.  To become a member, please click on this link https://wfrn.org/become-a-member/.