Adults sometimes have strong preferences for their own family formation and childbearing, but these preferences can also be shaped by relationship context in distinct ways for women and men. 

Using the National Couples' Time and Health Study (NCHAT), the first population-representative study of same-gender and mixed-gender couples, we consider how stress felt about household division of labor affects desires for a child, focusing on the COVID-19 pandemic. In mixed-gender couples, women are disproportionately burdened by household work and childcare relative to men, whereas there is often more balance in household labor in same-gender couples. This study revealed that higher stress about housework is associated with higher desires for a child for men, both those partnered with women and with men, as well as women with women partners. Stress was not associated with childbearing desires for women partnered with men, who had the lowest desire for children overall. These findings suggest that men who desire a child may feel stress to be the breadwinner, whereas women's stress is part of their burden of housework, unrelated to their childbearing desires.

Women and men often hold disparate expectations about their roles in the workplace, at school, and in the household. This project asks how women's and men's expectations extend into the bedroom. Using a national survey experiment of 1,503 people aged 18-59 enrolled in the American Population Panel, I find that women and men believe young men and women feel similar expectations to perform oral sex when asked by a partner. However, men tend to prioritize receiving oral sex in this situation, whereas women prioritize performing for their partner. 

Sexual minoritized adults in the United States face daily interpersonal discrimination and anti-LGBTQ legislation that negatively affects their mental health and wellbeing. This project asks whether positive intimate relationships can buffer the negative effects of identity-based discrimination on  poor mental health outcomes, stress, and social isolation.

This proposed study uses data from the National Couples' Health and Time Use Study to test whether sexual satisfaction buffers against the association between self-reported Interpersonal discrimination and negative mental health, stress, and social isolation.

Having children in today's world is expensive and time-consuming, and costs continue to rise each year. Some young adults decide to have fewer children, and others decide to opt out of becoming parents altogether. Sexual minoritized adults face additional financial and logistical barriers to becoming parents, but we know little about the factors that influence their fertility preferences.

In collaboration with Dr. Kathleen Broussard at the University of South Carolina, this project asks adults in the United States about the relative importance of social and economic factors in shaping their fertility preferences, and which specific barriers affect their childbearing ideals and plans.