SoAn Culture & Society Discussion Series: "Everybody Needs a Wife"

"Everybody Needs a Wife: How Intensive Grandparenting Reinforces Gender Deference and the Stalled Revolution in Families" w/Prof. Jennifer Utrata

Nearly half of all U.S. grandparents provide some childcare (and frequently domestic and financial) support to the families of their grown children. Yet when grandparents step in to support grown children and grandchildren, some fathers step back from serving as equal co-parents. Drawing on research with parents and grandparents, Prof. Jennifer Utrata will illuminate how grandparental involvement shapes the gender dynamics of couples relying on extended family supports, while also challenging some nuclear family “self-sufficiency” myths.