Melissa Milkie is Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto where she served as Graduate Chair for many years. She is also Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of Maryland. She served as President of the Work and Family Reseachers Network (WFRN) from 2021 to 2023, and as a Deputy Editor at the journals American Sociological Review and Gender & Society.

Professor Milkie's expertise lies in the areas of culture, gender, family, the work-family interface, and health. She has written extensively about time spent in work and family roles and its implications for health and well-being. With Suzanne Bianchi and John Robinson, she is author of Changing Rhythms of American Family Life, which won two America Sociological Association (ASA) sections' book awards. The book examines changes (some of them surprising ones) in mothers' and fathers' time allocations across four decades, as well as parents' feelings about time. The upcoming book Parents Under Pressure will bring this portrait of American families up-to-date and explore the time shifts during and after the pandemic. Professor Milkie's research also examines links between the work-family interface and family dynamics, including how parents’ work-family roles shape children’s health, how spouses' work conflicts affect the other partner, and how children influence parents’ mental health. 

Professor Milkie is founding director of the Culture Lab at Maryland, a resource and training lab for analyzing and assessing culture through content/textual analysis and other methods. She examines cultural models of gender, work and family, for example surrounding “involved fathering” and “intensive mothering.” Her projects have focused on cultural meanings of blame for low father involvement, how parenting time is contested, and "the Mommy Wars" and the ideas surrounding "status safeguarding" or the work parents do in order to provide for their children's future academic, skill-building, emotional and social success.

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