Melissa Milkie

Melissa Milkie is Professor of Sociology and Chair of the tri-campus Graduate Department. 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 ASA section's book awards. The book examines changes (some of these surprising ones) in mothers' and fathers' time allocations across four decades, as well as parents' feelings about time. The upcoming book "Paradoxes of Parents' Time" will bring this portrait of American families up-to-date and explore the time shifts during 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.” Recent projects focus on cultural meanings of blame for low father involvement, how parenting time is contested, and "the Mommy Wars."

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